
Class. 

Book 



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GopyrightlSi? 

CQFXPJGHT DEPOSIT. 



A DOZEN BE'S FOE BOYS 



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JENNIE FOWLER WILLING 



Author of "From Fifteen to Twenty-five,"" "The Potential 

Woman," "Diamond Dust,'''' "The Only Way 

Out" "A Bunch of Flowers for GirU" 

etc., etc. 



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Copyright by 
T^E CHRISTIAN WITNESS 
CHICAGO 
1919 






DEC 29 1919 



©C1.A559184 



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PREFACE 



This may well be called the children's age- 
Never was there so much done for the young 
people as today. It was said of John the 
Baptist, who was the forerunner of Jesus 
and the herald of this gospel dispensation, 
"He shall turn the hearts of the Fathers to 
the children," and "the hearts of the chil- 
dren to their fathers" In this utterance 
we have prophesied the modern Sunday 
School and the modern religious movement 
among the young people in all the churches. 

It is not a long time ago that childhood 
conversions were looked upon with suspicion 
and even now there is not too much encour- 
agement given to childhood piety. There are 
many who have endorsed the theory of child- 
conversion who after all, do not work it in a 
practical manner. They are inclined to wait 
a while before they urge the young to seek 
the Lord. They forget that the Bible urges 
young people to seek the Lord. It never en- 
courages the idea of waiting until older that 
they may better understand what they are 
doing, as some advocate. 

When will the church un derst and that it is 
better to be converted in childhood than in 



adult age? When will we stop saying, "0 we 
did not have much of a revival, only a few 
children." Children are the hope of the 
world. The church that provides for the con- 
version and upbuilding of the children is 
laying foundations for its future prosperity. 
The church that neglects it might as well 
write Ichabod on its walls, for its glory has 
already departed. 

We think it was Spurgeon who said that 
of all the children he had received into his 
great church, not one had ever to be disci- 
plined. This is a great testimony. When 
we fear lest children may disgrace the cause, 
we ought to remember that it has often been 
adults, who have done so. 

This book that aims to help children to be 
good and true and loyal to Jesus is in a good 
work. We welcome such books. 

The author believes that boys should be 
Christians, and should be so encouraged. 
They should be taught to be right and then 
the doing right will come easy. Character 
brings action of its own kind, good or bad. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 
Be Eight _---.-.. 5 

CHAPTER II. 
Be Faithful - . -- -. - - - 18 

CHAPTER III. 
Be True ---82 

CHAPTER IV. 
Be Bbaye .... 40 

CHAPTER V. 
Be Honest . . 4$ 

CHAPTER VI. 
Be Gentle 59 

CHAPTER VII. 
Be Polite 80 

a 



4 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Be Industrious ---*-.. 91 

CHAPTER IX. 
Be Pure 104 

CHAPTER X. 
Be All Right - - - - - - 116 

CHAPTER XI. 
Be Happy -------- 127 

CHAPTER XIL 
Be Somebody 13© 



A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 



CHAPTER I. 

BE EIGHT. 

A great statesman once said, " It is better 
to be right than to be President." A queer, 
old fellow in the Southwest used to say, " Be 
sure you're right, then go ahead." 

Some people seem to think it does not 
matter much whether boys are right, or not. 
They look upon them as convenient, little 
machines to run of errands; troublesome 
bothers around in the way, always about 
when they are not wanted, never to be found 
when they are needed. So they push them 
around, and order them about, till the poor 
little bundles of delicate nerves and muscles 
5 



6 A DOZEN BITS FOB BOYS. 

are toughened and calloused; as they were 
never meant by the Lord to be. 

I once knew an active, sensitive, little fel- 
low, who .was always ready to do anything to 
oblige one ; as happy as a kitten in the sun- 
shine if a pleasant word were spoken to him ; 
his heart torn all to tatters by a scolding. 
His father was dead. His uncle, who had 
taken him to bring up, was a great, stout, 
tough, good man, with no more idea than a 
Comanche Indian how much such a boy 
could bear. Tim could run tip a tree like a 
squirrel, but his pants would catch on the 
twigs and tear. The fun of the climb was 
often spoiled by a horrid hole in the knee. 
He knew what was sure to come. Rough 
words would rattle down on his head like big 
hail stones : worse than that, every sentence 
was like the stroke of a tomahawk, if Tim, 
you careless boy ; what makes you tear your 
pants so? we shall have to put leather on 
their knees." He would go off by himself 
and cry, and wish he was dead, so he could 



BE RIGHT. J 

not !>e scolded. In a few minutes he was 
back at his play, whooping and hurrahing 
like a young Pawnee, to hide how much he 
cared about the scolding. But his heart 
would not stop aching for half a day. 

I am not going to say how sorry I am for 
the man who hurt himself by letting the 
savage part of his nature get the better of 
him ; but I know that such treatment was 
death for the boy. It made something grow 
over his feelings as hard as the shell on a 
mud-turtle's back. You might pour all man- 
ner of good, true things over it, and he would 
not mind what you said any more than the 
turtle would the patter of rain-drops. What 
do I think the boy ought to have done ? 
What every one of us ought to do. First, be 
sure we are right, and then never mind if 
things do go hard with us. 

A little bright-eyed, curly-headed chap 
looks up at me mischievously and asks, " How 
can a fellow be sure that he is right ? " 

There is no use in talking about doing 



8 A DOZEN BE'S FOE B0T8. 

right till you get right. You can't go to 
New York till you get started on the right 
road. Somebody tells a funny story about a 
man who was going to Newton, and as he 
walked along he thought it was time he came 
in sight of the town, but he couldn't see any- 
thing of it, so he stopped another whom he 
met and said, " Will you tell me how far it 
is to Newton ? " The answer was, " It is 
about twenty-five thousand miles the way 
you are going now; but if you will turn 
square around and go the other way, it won't 
be more than one." You can't go to any place 
till you set your face toward it. You can't 
be right, till you make up you mind to get 
right. Yes, I mean that every boy must give 
his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, and let 
Him make it all over new before he can be- 
gin to be right. 

Do you ask how old a boy must be to give 
his heart to the Saviour ? Not nearly so old 
as most people think. You have heard of 
the equator. What is it ? Up go the hands 



BE RIGHT. 9 

of all the Geography scholars. " An imagin- 
ary line drawn around the earth at an equal 
distance from the poles." If you were in a 
ship sailing southward, do you think there 
would be a bump when you sailed over the 
equator? No; you would go right on, no- 
body noticing. Some day you would " cross 
the line," as the sailors say. An hour before 
you were in the northern hemisphere, the 
next in the southern. There is a line in 
every child's life. Wise people call it " the 
line of accountable action." They mean that 
before children pass that line, God doesn't 
keep account with them ; but afterwards He 
charges them with every sin. Babies can't 
be wicked because they don't know better 
than to do naughty things ; but I think boys 
and girls "know better" much sooner than we 
suppose. I remember one little boy only 
six years old, who was sitting on the door- 
step with his sister two or three years older 
than himself. They were looking at the 
moon as it seemed to be running through the 



10 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

clouds. His sister told him that children had 
souls that would never die ; and if they were 
good, their souls would go to a good place 
and be happy forever, but if they were bad, 
they would go to a dreadful place that they 
could never get out of. This scared the 
poor child, and he asked how old they had 
to be to be sent to the bad place if they died. 
She told him, " No old at all," meaning, it did 
n't matter how young they were, if they knew 
it was bad to do wrong things. The little 
boy had done plenty of things that he knew 
were wrong, and he understood that they 
would keep him from going to the good 
place. His first thought was, as he saw a 
night-hawk fly by, he wished he could turn 
into that bird so as not to have a soul. Then 
he looked at old Rover, lying beside them on 
the step, and he wished he could turn into 
a dog. Then he began to cry. His mother 
came and took him off to bed, and he cried 
himself to sleep, with no one to tell him how 
much the Saviour loved him, and how easy it 



BE RIGHT. 11 

would be to give his heart to Jesus and have 
it made right. 

I once heard an old class-leader say, " It is 
the easiest thing in the world for a little boy 
to be converted. " Why," he said, " the Lord 
converted my soul one night when I was a 
little boy sitting on the wood-pile looking at 
the moon." 

I know a gentleman who is now a mission- 
ary in India. His mother told me that he 
was converted one night in a family prayer- 
meeting at home. He was asleep when they 
began to pray, but awoke ; and hearing the 
prayers, he thought that his heart was bad, 
and he wanted it made good. A friend who 
was visiting his father and mother, came to 
him while the rest were on their knees, and 
found out what made him cry. He told him 
to give up his sins and give his heart to 
Jesus and He would make it all right. The 
child prayed, " Dear Lord Jesus, forgive my 
sins and give me a new heart, and I will 
never be putchicky at my dear, little brother 



12 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

again as long as I live. No, never ! " And 
from that night he was a Christian boy. 

If children do not yield to the first call of 
the Holy Spirit, they begin to grow hard ; 
then, like other sinners, they have their 
doubts about God and the Bible. They hear 
wicked men ask questions that anybody can 
ask, but nobody can answer until he has 
studied long and hard. They begin to form 
bad religious habits. They neglect to say 
their prayers, or merely say them. Satan 
tells them that they are only words, and 
there is nobody to hear or answer. They 
dip a little into sin. At first they are like 
boys learning to smoke — it makes them 
dreadfully sick at heart. The first time we 
do a thing we know to be very bad, we hard- 
ly sleep at night ; but we soon get used to 
it. Habits grow constantly stronger. They 
begin in cobwebs and end in cart-ropes. 

If you have not given your heart to 
Christ, you are in a boat drifting out upon 
the tide, the distance between you and the 



BE RIGHT. 13 

land growing wider every minute. Every 
hour you wait makes it harder and harder 
for you to get to the Lord. Jesus wants all 
the children to come to Him at once, and be 
saved. 

There were some people living on the 
shore of the bay near Boston. Just back of 
the garden gate was a stake driven into the 
ground, to which a boat was fastened by a 
rope. When the tide was out, the boat was 
on dry ground ; but when the tide came in, 
it would come up around the boat, and the 
children would get in and let the little waves 
teeter them this way and that. 

One day they stayed out at their play 
longer than usual. Their mother missed 
them and began to look for them. She 
went to her neighbor's house, and asked, 
" Have you seen anything of my children ? M 
kk Yes," said the neighbor; " I saw them play- 
ing in the boat after the tide came up 
around it." Then the mother ran down the 
garden walk and looked for the boat, but it 



14 A DOZEN BE' 3 FOR BOYS. 

was gone. Then she knew that the children, 
playing in the boat, had loosed the rope 
from the stake, and when the tide went 
out it had carried them out upon the bay. 
She looked over the water, but could see 
nothing of them. Then she began to cry 
and wring her hands, and all the neighbors 
came running together, and everybody was 
in great excitement about those three little 
children that had been carried out to sea by 
the tide. They telegraphed to Boston, and 
men with row-boats came, and pulled out 
upon the water as far as they could go, and 
looked in every direction ; and the tug-boats 
came steaming down, going out this way 
and that ; but nobody could find the chil- 
dren. At last it began to grow dark, and 
the people built a great fire on the beach and 
stayed there all night. The mother was 
on her knees with her hands clasped, 
and her pale face lifted up toward the skies, 
while her heart prayed in agony that God 
would take care of her little children in that 



BE RIGHT. 15 

boat away out upon the lone, dark sea. 
Early in the morning the people were look- 
ing off over the water, when an old sailor, 
whose eyes were sharper than those of the 
other people, saw a large ship coming in. 
He thought perhaps the crew had seen the 
little boat in the night, and had picked it 
up ; so he waited till the ship came near. It 
was weather-beaten, and looked as if it had 
met storms in coming all that long way 
from India. He put his hands together and 
made a speaking trumpet of them, so that his 
voice would go farther ; then he sung out to 
the sailors on board the great ship, " Any — 
children — on — board ? " Everyone was as 
still as death, and he could almost hear 
his heart beat while he waited for the 
answer. It came presently, over the water, 
faint but clear, " Children — all — safe." 
Sure enough, in the night the great ship had 
picked up the little boat, and the children 
were all safe. You can hardly think how 
glad everybody was when they were brought 



16 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

home after their dangerous night out upon 
the sea. God means the old ship, His 
Church, to have all the little children safe 
on board. And I think our Saviour, as He 
sees the ship come in, will call to us to know 
if we have the children on board; and we 
mean to be able to say, " Yes, dear Lord, the 
children are all safe." 

You ask, How can you be converted? 
Make up your mind to give Christ your 
heart ; ask Him to forgive your sins ; prom- 
ise Him to be His child and serve Him as 
long as you live. You have a right to be- 
lieve that He does make you His child that 
very moment. Shut up the book, please, 
and kneel down just where you are, and give 
your heart to Christ, so that you may begin 
to be right. 

I remember a little boy who was awakened 
by the Holy Spirit to see himself a sinner. 
He was twelve or thirteen years old ; he had 
always prayed beside his bed before going to 
sleep at night. That time he saw that his 



BE RIGHT. 17 

praying had been little more than saying 
over good words; he had not really asked 
God to give him a new heart. After get- 
ting into bed that night he began to pray 
in earnest. The more he prayed the worse 
he felt. At last, slipping ont of bed, he 
went to his mother's room, and getting upon 
his knees by her bed, asked her to please 
pray for him just then, that God would 
make him His child. You may be sure she 
was glad enough to do it, and he was con- 
verted then and there. 

Possibly you have no mother; she may 
have gone away to heaven. Christ will care 
for you all the more tenderly if you are 
alone. Don't wait another hour. Go to 
Him at once, and let Him make your heart 
right. 



CHAPTER II. 

BE FAITHFUL. 

Pephaps you have waited to come to the 
Lord till you have formed habits that are 
against your being the Christian you want to 
be. You have become used to doing things that 
are not quite right till they seem to do them- 
selves. You are like the little boy in school 
who was called up for whistling. " Indeed," 
he said, half crying, " I didn't whistle, I am 
sure I didn't." "But," said the teacher, "I 
heard you." " Oh, rna'am ; it just whistled 
itself." Our habits become so strong that 
they do themselves. But there is one good 
thing about it ; if you get the habit of do- 
ing right things, it makes easy work of 
being a Christian. 

Mr. Moody once asked a gentleman whom 
he met if he were a Christian. The man said 
18 



BE FAITHFUL. 19 

he was. Then Mr. Moody asked, " Are you 
an O. and O.? " The gentleman didn't quite 
understand what he meant by that. He 
meant an " Out-and-Outer." If you want to 
be an Out and- Outer you must begin by form- 
ing right habits. 

You need to pray by yourself at least three 
times a day. No matter how good family 
prayer they may have at your house, nor how 
many meetings you may attend, nor how 
much Christian work you may find to do, 
nothing can take the place of private prayer. 

Perhaps you have a great admiration for 
your mother. It is beautiful to see a young 
fellow in love with his mother. If you have 
such an admiration, you need to spend time 
alone with her, when she can say things to 
you that she doesn't say to the rest. You 
may be obedient and kind to her ; you may 
enjoy the nice things she says at the table ; 
you may go to her for help in your lessons 
when the rest are around, but nothing will 
take the place of those sweet, confidential, 



20 A DOZEN BITS FOR B0T8. 

little talks that you may have all by your- 
selves. 

Now that is a little like private prayer. 
Spurgeon said that when he went away to 
school, and the boys hazed and tormented 
him, as they are very apt to do in English 
schools, he used to get fearfully homesick, 
but he found that the Lord Jesus was a 
friend to whom he could go for comfort 
always. He says, " He never was too busy 
to attend to me ; He never made fun of me, 
and He never told." Jesus ought to be your 
confidential friend; you ought to talk with 
Him alone at least three times a day. 

The more simply and directly you talk to 
Him the better. The Tartar turns the crank 
of his praying mill, and grinds out a prayer 
every time the machine goes round. The 
Romanist rattles over his Ave Marias and 
Pater Nosters, letting a bead slip through his 
fingers with every prayer, so as to keep ac- 
count of their number. It is quite a differ- 
ent thing to go to Jesus and tell Him out of 



BE FAITHFUL. 21 

your heart all the troubles that annoy you, 
and ask Him to give you grace to do just as 
He wants you to do in them all. 

It is a good thing to waken so early in the 
morning that you can talk with Him about 
all you expect to do during the day, and ask 
strength and wisdom to do just right every 
time. Then you ought to find a place some- 
where in the middle of the day to break in 
upon the study and fun for a few minutes to 
ask Him to keep you right. You certainly 
will not trust yourself to sleep without ask- 
ing Him to forgive all your sins and make 
everything right between you and Him. 

Some people think it answers to cry out 
to the Lord, now and then, without set times 
of going by yourself to pray, but I do not 
think so. That would be very much like 
living on " pieces " all the time. You might 
buy ginger-cakes and peanuts and eat them 
as you walked. It would keep you from 
starving, but would be very apt to give you 
the dyspepsia. To keep oar bodies well we 



22 A DOZEN BE' 8 FOR BOYS. 

have to sit down to a table three times a day 
and eat enough good, solid food to give us 
strength. We need to feed our souls by go- 
ing -to the Lord at least as. often as we take 
our meals. 

There may be days when you are having a 
hard time of temptation. Then you will 
have to pray the oftener. I remember hear- 
ing a young man say shortly after his con- 
version, that some days he was tempted to do 
wrong from morning till night, and ever so 
many times a day he would go into the room 
back of the store, drop on his knees, and 
ask the Lord for help. He found out after- 
ward that those days when lie had to fight 
temptation so hard, were the very ones in 
which he grew most rapidly in grace. 

You must study the Bible every day. I 
remember a boy who was with us one sum- 
mer vacation. Always after breakfast and 
prayers he would take his Bible and go away 
by himself into the woods to pray and study 
alone. And I think I never knew a more 
conscientious, good boy than he was. 



BE FAITHFUL. 23 

You cannot understand all that is in the 
Bible till you have studied many years; but 
you can understand enough to do you a great 
deal of good. When you sit down to eat at 
a restaurant table you do not think that you 
must take everything that is on the bill of 
fare. You pick out the few things that you 
enjoy eating, and that are good for you, and 
leave the rest for those who are able to 
digest them and who enjoy eating them. So 
in reading the Bible, it is easy to find a great 
deal that is good for your soul. And it will 
not be many years till you will grow strong 
enough to be helped by parts that are now 
quite beyond your reach. If you come to 
anything that troubles you because it seems 
strange and difficult, go to your father, 
mother, pastor, or some Christian who 
seems to know a great deal about the Word 
of God, and ask for an explanation. 

It is a good plan to commit to memory 
whole chapters of the Bible. For myself, I 
never seem to get right down to the mar- 



24 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

row and fatness of a text of Scripture until I 
have learned it by heart. I usually lay more 
stress on my love for the Bible than any 
other sign of the love of Christ in my soul. 
If I can say with David, " Thy words are 
sweeter than honey and the honeycomb," I 
am pretty sure I am growing in grace. If I 
cannot, I drop everything and pray till Jesus 
gives me back the love for His own dear 
Book. 

Did you ever read of that young English 
king, Edward IV., who showed his love for 
the Bible when one of his courtiers carelessly 
put it upon a bench and stepped upon it to 
raise himself to reach something ? When he 
stepped down, the king, not wishing to re- 
buke a man so much older than himself, took 
the Bible and laid it back upon the table, 
reverently kissing it as he did so. 

It is said that the Hebrews would not al- 
low a piece of paper to be destroyed for fear 
the name of God might be found upon it, so 
great was their reverence for that name. We, 



BE FAITHFUL. 25 

certainly, who find in the Bible our promises 
of salvation, all our happiness here and here- 
after, ought to be as careful of our Holy 
Boofe. 

If we pray in secret three times a day, till 
our hearts feel warm toward Christ ; if we 
love to study the Bible, and do study it 
every day, we can hardly fail of getting 
along well in our religious life. I know a 
man in New Mexico who was a general in 
the Mexican army. He had been a Roman 
Catholic, but had lost faith in his church and 
in all Christian doctrines. One day he be- 
gan to read the Bible, and he found it a won- 
derful book as a literary production. He 
immediately bought copies of it and gave 
them to his soldiers to read, merely to make 
them more thoughtful. He kept that up for 
three years till he was convinced of its 
truth. Then one evening when he was read- 
ing those words of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
" Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden and T will give you rest," his 



26 A DOZEN BE>S FOR BOYS. 

heart went to Christ, and he found rest from 
his sins : he was converted. I suppose 
thousands and thousands of people have 
been converted to God through reading the 
Bible. 

After you have given your heart to the 
Lord Jesus Christ you will want to join the 
Church. It will be a help to you, if you 
have not been baptized in your infancy, to 
acknowledge Him publicly in baptism. 
Then you will have the members of the 
Church to look after you, and pray for you ; 
and you will have the care of a pastor. 
Joining the Church is like going into a fam- 
ily to live, where there are a father and a 
mother, brothers and sisters. You could 
keep soul and body together in a room by 
yourself, eating crackers and cheese when 
you were hungry, but there would not be 
much comfort in that way of living. You 
would get along much better to have a 
home, and people with whom you could talk 
and laugh while you sat at the table. 



BE FAITHFUL. 27 

When Christ instituted the Sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper, He told us to do that in 
remembrance of Him ; and the very best 
thing for us is to obey Him in this matter. 
If you do not belong to the Church the evil 
spirit will tell you that you have no right at 
the table of the Lord, and so will lead you 
to neglect that duty. 

It is a good thing to form a habit of going 
to the class and prayer-meetings, and to take 
part in them. Your little prayer, and the 
few words you say in " testimony," may not 
seem of much account to anybody but your- 
self. They will help you by making you 
firm in your trust in the Saviour. If there 
are boys' or children's meetings, it will be 
easy, but if you have only grown people's 
services it may bother you somewhat to take 
part in them. If you talk in your simple 
boy fashion, it may not seem at all like what 
the rest say. But never mind ; don't try to 
be like the others. They may smile at what 
you say, but don't let that worry you. 



28 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

I remember a little girl who was always 
fresh and simple in what she said. One day 
she went to a neighbor's on an errand, and 
the ladies of the house asked her some ques- 
tions just to hear what she would say. 
Then they exchanged glances and smiled. 
She caught this by-play, and went away, and 
cried, and had a very sad time over it, 
though afterwards they told her mother that 
it was because what she said seemed so old 
and odd for such a little midget ; and instead 
of thinking her foolish, as she supposed, 
they thought her specially bright. 

You must go to the meetings, whether any 
other boys do or not. Take your little part 
in them when you have a chance, whether it 
is expected of you or not. The tempter 
may try to make you think it is hard some- 
times ; and older people -have a careless way 
of making it all the harder by passing boys 
by. But never mind that. When you look 
at it fairly, it cannot be a cross to say a little 
word each time for Him who bore that 



BE FAITHFUL. 29 

dreadful cross for you. You will have to do 
it if you are to be an " O. and O." Christian. 
I am sorry that older people don't know- 
how to make it easy for boys to be Chris- 
tians^ I remember reading of a man who 
became very noted as a preacher. When he 
was a little fellow his father was holding a 
revival service one bright spring day. The 
child had kept asking himself why boys 
could not be converted as well as grown 
people. Nobody said anything to him about 
it, and finally he went off into the meadow 
by himself and knelt down and asked the 
Lord if He could not convert a boy's soul as 
well as anybody's. The Saviour came and 
forgave his sins, and he was so happy 
about it he thought he would run up to the 
meeting and tell them all, because they 
would surely be glad to find out that the 
Lord Jesus Christ could convert boys. He 
went into the meeting and they were all sit- 
ting around as still and solemn as could be, 
and speaking in such a measured and careful 



30 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS, 

way, that he was afraid to speak right out 
what was in his heart, as he meant to do. 
Presently his father beckoned him to come 
to him. He got up with his heart beating 
very fast, for he was sure that his father was 
going to give him a chance to tell what the 
Saviour had done for him. To his surprise 
and grief the minister only said, " Henry, 
what under the sun did you come to church 
barefooted for ? " His poor little heart went 
down to the soles of his bare feet, and he 
began to cry ; and Satan said to him, 
" There ! there is nothing of it ; you are 
mistaken, after all. If Jesus had forgiven 
your sins, your father, who knows so much, 
would not have said that to you ; he would 
have given you a chance to tell the people." 
He began to doubt immediately, and he 
grew very hard and wicked, and almost 
broke their hearts before they could get him 
to put away his doubts and be a real Chris- 
tian again. 

No matter how hard the older people, in 



BE FAITHFUL. 31 

their thoughtlessness, may make it for you ; 
you must do the thing that pleases the Lord 
Jesus Christ, or you cannot grow in His 
grace and favor. Let come what will, you 
must be faithful to Him in everything. 



CHAPTER III. 

&E TRUE. 

Truthfulness is a mark of a Christian. 
The heathen go astray speaking lies as soon 
as they are born. In China a mother will 
give her boy a reward for the best falsehood 
that he can tell. Beginning so early, and 
regarding it such a fine thing to tell wrong 
stories, they become skillful in falsehood. 
Some parents in Christian America are very 
careless in this matter. It made my heart 
ache one day when I saw a lady in a street 
car trying to keep her little boy awake by 
telling him that if he went to sleep, that 
man who had all those teeth in his window 
(referring to a dentist's office they had 
passed) would come into the car and pull 
every tooth out of his mouth. The little 
fellow looked up dreadfully scared, and did 



BE TRUE. 33 

his best to keep awake ; but I thought to 
myself, when he finds out what a wrong 
story his mother has told, he will not 
believe her even when she tells the truth. 
He will be like a little fellow of whom I 
heard once, whose mother told him that if he 
went to play in a bank from which the men 
had been drawing sand for building, a bear 
would come out and eat him up. One day 
another boy tried to coax him to go there 
and play, but he said, No, he was afraid of 
the bears. The other boy said there were no 
bears. " But there be bears,'cause my mother 
says there be bears." While they were dis- 
puting the minister happened to come along, 
and they asked him if there were bears in the 
§and-bank. He told them that there were 
none. "But," said the first little boy "my 
mother said there be bears there." " I am 
sorry she said so," said the minister, " But 
the truth is, there are none." The child be- 
gan to cry, and started for home as fast as he 
«*onld go. " O Mamma," he said, " did you 



34 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

tell me a wrong story ? Did you tell me 
there be bears down at the sand-bank when 
there ben't any? " She saw what a dreadful 
sin she had committed, and she told him that 
she was sorry ; but she was afraid that if he 
played there he would get buried in the 
sand, and she told him that to keep him 
away. "But, Mamma, it is such an awful 
thing to tell a wrong story." " I know it, 
Tommy, I know it," she said, tears coming 
into her eyes, "and we will ask Jesus to 
forgive me, and I will never do it again." 
They knelt down, and she was just about to 
pray, when he said, " Wait, Mamma ; let me 
ask Him ; maybe you won't tell Him truly." 
That pierced her heart like a dagger. She 
saw that her little boy had lost confidence in 
her truthfulness even when she prayed. 

I am very glad that my mother was care- 
ful about the truth. She taught me from a 
child that I must never tell anything that 
was not exactly so. I remember once being 
at a lady's house when someone rang 



BE TRUE. 35 

the door-bell. The lady was very busy, and 
did not want to be bothered with a call, so 
she told me to tell the woman that she was 
not at home. I was sadly puzzled. I dis- 
liked to disoblige her, and yet I did not dare 
say she was not at home when she was. She 
saw how worried I was, and laughed about 
it, and went herself to the door. She 
thought it was only a little " white lie," and 
it did not matter very much about it. But 
there are no " white lies " ; they are all black. 
One good man says that we tell wrong 
stories in fun to go to the bad place in earn- 
est. Some boys deceive u just for fun." 
They tell what is untrue to scare somebody ; 
just " making believe " as they say ; " only 
fooling," till they get very careless about 
the truth. 

If your mother has failed to teach you 
that it is wrong to tell even a small untruth, 
or if you have become careless about it your- 
self, you must go to Jesus and confess your 
fault to Him, and ask Him to make you know 
and love the truth. 



36 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

When people are not true it makes every- 
thing like quicksand. We were driving 
along the other day, when, all of a sudden, 
one side of the carriage and one horse went 
away down into the creek through which we 
were going. They had gotten into the 
quicksand. The horse floundered and sprang 
with all his might, but everything gave way 
under his feet. If the other horse had not 
been on solid ground I do not know what 
would have become of us ; but the other one 
pulled him out. Now when we get to doubt- 
ing everybody, not knowing whether they 
are telling us the truth or not, we are like 
that horse in the quicksand, everything slips 
out from under our feet. If you were to 
try to walk on the edge of a spot of quick- 
sand when you were "in swimming," you 
would see how the ground would slip away 
from your feet and you could not depend 
upon it at all. You would have to jump with 
all your might to get out of it, or it would 
suck you down all out of sight, and drown or 



BE TBUE. 37 

choke you to death. Everyone who tells a 
thing that is not true helps to make a quick- 
sand for people to mire in. 

There was a boy in England whose father 
was dead. His step-father wanted to get rid 
of him, so he put him in the hold of a vessel 
that was coming to America. When they 
had been out at sea a day or so, the sailors 
found him, and brought him up on deck. 
They took him to the captain, who was a 
very stern man, and said they had found a 
little stowaway in the hold. The captain 
had had a good many such free passengers, 
and it made him very angry. The little fel- 
low told him his story simply and truly, but 
the captain did not believe him. He told 
him he knew that one of the sailors had put 
him there to get him oyer without paying. 
The boy stuck to the truth, and said that the 
sailors had nothing to do with it; that it 
was his step-father who put him in the hold. 
The captain took out his watch, and took a 
piece of rope in his hand, and told the child 



38 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS 

that he would give him fifteen minutes to 
tell the truth in. The boy was as white as a 
ghost, but he could only say, " I have told 
you just what is true, and I cannot tell it 
any other way." The captain told him five 
minutes were gone, and in ten minutes more 
he would hang him to the yard-arm if he 
didn't tell which sailor had stowed him 
away in the hold. The little fellow said, 
" "Well, if I must die, give me a little time to 
say my prayer in, so as to get ready." He 
knelt down, clasped his hands, raised his 
pale face, and commenced saying " Our 
Father which art in Heaven." The captain 
saw that he was true. His lip began to 
quiver, and a tear slipped down over his rough, 
brown face, and he said, " My boy, I believe 
you are telling the truth, and you will have 
a friend in me after this. It is not every 
boy that will stick to the truth, with a rope 
and a yard-arm just over his head." So the 
captain took the child and cared for him 
always after that. 



BE TRUE. 39 

Never vary from the truth. You may 
make a mistake, but if you do not mean to 
do so, Christ will take care of it. Be true 
from principle. Be true because it is right, 
and then you can be depended upon. 

Sir Henry Havelock came in one rainy 
night in London, and his wife asked, " Where 
is Harry?" "Harry!" exclaimed the Gen- 
eral, " why, he is on London bridge. I told 
him early this afternoon to go there and wait 
for me, but I had forgotten all about it, and 
he is standing there yet." " Well," said the 
lady, " send a servant for him." M No ; 
Harry is always true and always obedient ; I 
can always depend upon him to do just as I 
say: he has stood all this time in the rain 
because I told him to, and he said he would ; 
and since I have forgotten him so long, it is 
little enough for me to go myself and fetch 
him." He knew that his boy was true and 
faithful. 



CHAPTER IV. 

BE BRAVE. 

Boys have usually enough to make them 
brave. They have all manner of adven- 
tures, out of which they come alive, and 
every one of which adds to their courage. 
The little brother who was my playmate 
when a child, had a hundred times as much 
to make him brave as I had. I was kept 
quietly in the house with my mother while 
he was out upon the farm at work. One 
day he went under the wagon to take a nap 
during the nooning, and there was a big rat- 
tlesnake coiled up. Another day he slipped 
off a load of hay in front of the wheel, when 
the wagon was going down-hill. He called, 
"Whoa!" and the horses stopped and held 
the load, till he could scramble away from 
before the wheel ; otherwise it would have 
40 



BE BRAVE. 41 

passed over his body and crushed hirn. One 
time he was bathing in the river, and was 
carried over a dam by the current. Instead 
of falling with the sheet of water into the 
stream below, he swung around under the 
boards that shelved over and made the dam. 
If he had not given a great kick against the 
"apron," as they called it, and sprung 
through the sheet of water, he would have 
been drowned. Another day the horse that 
we called "the gray" threw him, and then 
dragged him for rods through the woods 
with one foot in the stirrup. No wonder, 
with all these things, that he grew to be 
brave. 

All do not have so much to give them 
courage as that country boy had; yet if 
they make up their minds, they can be brave. 

Anyone who means to have courage ought 
not to listen at night to murder and ghost 
stories, till he is afraid to go out of doors 
alone. I have heard my father say that 
when he was a child it was a favorite amuse- 



42 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

merit in the new country where he lived, 
when people came together for an evening, 
for some one to dress up with a false face 
and a sheet, and come to the door and scare 
the rest as nearly out of their senses as they 
could. Some of them would faint quite 
away with fright. Once in a while one 
would be so hurt as never to get over it. I 
can hardly think of anything more foolish in 
the way of amusement. I would never tear 
my nerves to bits in that fashion. If I 
found the folks were going to tell those 
dreadful stories, I would slip away from 
them, though I might be ever so curious to 
know what they were going to say. 

Make up your mind to go and do a thing 
when it is right, no matter how afraid you 
may be, even if your hair stands straight up 
with fear. It may be to go down cellar after 
apples, or out to the- well after water, when 
it is pitch dark. Never mind; go straight 
along. Remember there is seldom really 
anything to be afraid of. Bears, wolves, and 



BE BRAVE. 43 

Indians have been driven off long ago. It 
is half the battle to make up your mind that 
you will not be afraid. Sometimes some- 
thing looks frightful, but if you go right out 
and see what it is, it proves to be nothing at 
all harmful. 

A man was sleeping by a camp fire one 
night, when he was awakened by a tramp- 
ling in the bushes. He looked out and saw 
something white dodging about. Now he 
could see it, and then it was gone. He was 
in a cold perspiration with fear, but he made 
up his mind there was no use in giving up 
to it, and he would go straight out and see 
what it was. And behold, it was an old, 
white horse, grazing among the bushes! 
Now that man was braver all the rest of his 
life because he mastered that fear. 

If you are very nervous and easily scared, 
go to the Lord and ask Him to give you 
courage. Many a boy has gone through real 
danger because he believed the word of Je- 
sus, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 



44 A DOZEN BE'S FOR B07S. 

the end " ; and he believed that the Saviour 
would keep him from all harm. The best 
courage comes from faith in the Lord. 

When God wants one to do special work, 
he tests his courage. When Moses was in 
the wilderness of Midian, and God was about 
to send him to Pharaoh, he appeared to him 
in the burning bush and talked with him. 
Moses would have to be very brave to go 
into the palace, where all those soldiers were 
and that heathen king with all his power, 
and tell him that he must give up his slaves. 
They could take his life any minute. It 
would never do to send a coward on such an 
errand as that. He was eighty years old 
then, and he had lived forty years in the des- 
ert so he was used to all kinds of venomous 
snakes ; yet when the Lord told him to 
throw down his rod, and it became a serpent, 
he ran away from it. Then God told him to 
take it by the tail. I have no doubt that 
frightened him fearfully. It might curl up 
and bite him and he would be dead within 



BE BRAVE. 45 

an hour ; but he made himself obey because 
he trusted God's power to keep him in 
safety. 

Joshua was a brave man. He went out 
from the camp one day to look toward Jericho 
and plan its capture, when all of a sudden a 
soldier stood before him, armed and in arm- 
or. Joshua might have run away, as he 
could easily have done from the soldier with 
the heavy armor. But he had the courage 
to step toward him and say, " Art thou for 
us or for our enemies ? " Then he heard 
that voice, sweeter than Heaven's music, 
say, "Nay, but as Captain of the Lord's 
hosts am I come." It was our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and He had come to show Joshua 
how he could capture the city. 

The Lora wants brave people to work for 
Him, ana we must maKe ourselves brave if 
we would do good work. We must have 
courage about our studies. Some hang back 
when they come to a hard lesson, and say, 
"Oh, I can't learn that; it is too hard." 



46 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

They don't half try ; they expect to fail, 
and they generally do. When you come to 
anything hard in your lessons, believe that 
you can learn it if others can, and go at it 
as if you expected to master it, and you will 
generally succeed. 

During the war, when Dupont was report- 
ing to Admiral Farragut the reason why 
he failed to take his ships into Charleston 
harbor and capture the place, he gave one 
reason after another to show that it could 
not be done. " You have not given the 
main reason," said the Admiral. " What is 
that?" asked Dupont. "The one reason 
why you did not go into the harbor and take 
the city was because you did not believe that 
you could." 

When Henry Ward Beecher was a boy, 
one day in school his teacher told him to go 
to the blackboard and work an example. He 
set it down and began multiplying and add- 
ing. Presently the teacher called in a loud, 
strong voice, " No." The boy stopped and 



BE BRAVE. 47 

rubbed out what he had written and began 
again. He got along about so far when the 
teacher called again, "No." He tried the 
third time and went part way through when 
he was again halted with that " No." Then 
he was sent to his seat, and another boy set 
at the example. That boy went on about as 
Beecher had done, when the teacher called 
"No," as before. The boy went right on, 
and finished the example and got the answer. 
" That was just the way I was doing it," said 
Beecher, half crying. "And who said it was 
not ? " asked the teacher sharply. You must 
be right, and know you are right, and not 
stop for anybody's " No," unless you can see 
where you are wrong." 

It is a trick of the evil one to make 
people ashamed of their religion. There is 
nothing weaker or worse than to be a moral 
coward. We must learn to stand by our 
colors. We must say, 

" Surely the Captain may depend on me, 
Though but an armor-bearer I may be." 



48 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

Perhaps you have heard of the drummer- 
boy, who was captured by the British during 
the Revolutionary War. They told him to 
beat an advance, and he made his drum 
sticks fly in a lively manner. Then he must 
beat a reveille, which he did. Then they 
ordered him to beat a retreat. " Oh," he 
said, " I don't know how. We never beat a 
retreat in our army." We must make up our 
minds never to beat a retreat in God's work, 
but always to go bravely on. 



CHAPTER V. 

BE HONEST. 

No one plunges at once into great crime. 
Thieves usually begin by stealing pennies, or 
cheating at marbles. They think it is such 
a little thing, it is of no account, it will never 
be missed. If one never takes a little thing 
he will be pretty sure never to take one that 
is large. The murderer begins by letting 
hate get into his heart. If I let a tiny snake 
slip down my throat when I am drinking in 
a creek, it will grow in my stomach to be 
something dreadful. The other day a boy of 
sixteen killed and hacked to pieces a girl of 
fifteen. He was "mad at her, and hated 
her," was all the reason he gave for his 
crime. If you would avoid being a murderer, 
look out for the little spites. If you do not 
want to become a thief, never take little 
49 



50 A DOZEN HE'S FOR BOYS. 

things. If you would always be honorable, 
do not cheat in small matters. 

Boys have usually a great deal to make 
them dishonest. Nobody seems to think it 
is very much if they take a few apples out 
of somebody's garden or orchard, or from a 
fruit-stand. They call it "hooking." Do 
you know where that word " hook " comes 
from ? In China they train their children to 
steal, and they think it is a fine thing to be 
able to take what does not belong to them, 
and not be caught at it. A missionary told me 
that if she left a window open at night, some 
one would come along with a pole that had a 
hook on the end of it, and take her things from 
a nail on the other side of the room, and draw 
them out at the window. So when you hear 
of hooking anything, you may know that it is 
a heathenish practice. That is the way the 
heathen hook things. When they steal in 
China, the leader of the company of thieves, 
goes to the police and settles the matter so 
as to get the thief off without being pun- 



BE HONEST. 51 

ished ; and the more skillful they are at steal- 
ing the more they think of themselves. A 
Chinaman laid a wager with an Englishman 
that he could steal the sheet from under him 
while he was asleep ; and he did. He showed 
his skill in that kind of business, you may be 
sure. 

In London they have a Thieves' Quarter. 
They are so much like the heathen there 
that they give their little children lessons in 
picking pockets. They hang up a coat with 
a pocket-book in it, and make the poor little 
things slip their hands into the pocket and 
take out the pocket-book without shaking 
the coat before they will let them have their 
breakfast; and they whip them if they are 
careless or bungling about it. We don't 
want to be heathen or London thieves, so 
we will not take lessons in stealing, picking 
up little things on the sly from peanut-stands 
in town, or out of the melon patches in the 
country, and call it " fun " and " hooking " 
and seeing how " smart " we can be. 



52 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

It is just as bad for a dozen boys to steal 
as if one did it alone. I have seen boys in 
the city stealing street car rides, dodging this 
way and that to keep out of the conductor's 
sight, a sharp, ugly grin on their hard faces. 
They were learning to live by their wits, and 
get a living without paying for it. I could 
see where those boys would come out. They 
had started straight for police courts, peni- 
tentiaries, and, as likely as not, the gallows. 

Boys cheat at their play because they are 
bound to get ahead of each other. Their mis- 
chief begins with the everlasting brag and 
bluster that one hears from a set of boys at 
play. Listen to them, all screaming at the 
top of their voices. With plenty of big slang 
words, and sometimes even worse ones, " I 
can beat you every time ! " "I can run 
faster than you can ! " "I can jump further 
than you ! " "I can throw the crowd ! " If 
a fellow can't keep ahead of the larger ones 
he will brow-beat the little chaps. Under 
the training a boy gets on the play-ground, 



BE HONEST. 53 

he must brag about something. One who was 
at a safe distance shook his fist at another who 
was too strong for him to whip, and hallooed 
out, " I don't care ; if I can't pound you, I 
can make mouths at your sister." Boys are 
apt to be quite rough in their plays. Take 
"shinnie," for instance, where they dash 
about on skates, getting rapped over the 
head with their shinnie sticks, having their 
noses flattened, skating off into an air hole 
once in a while, getting half drowned or 
frozen. Rough as it it, it is easy to cheat in 
it, I am told, and it is a thoroughly honest 
boy who will not try to get his side ahead by 
unfair means. Croquet is refined and gen- 
tle beside such games as that ; yet he is a 
truly honest boy who will not push his ball 
into position when nobody is looking. When 
boys get mad in their play they generally 
accuse each other of being unfair and of 
cheating. " Only in play," do you say ; 
" and what of it ? " Much, every way. They 
are forming habits that will tell what kind«>£ 



54 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

men they will be when they grow up. If 
they cheat at play, they will cheat in their 
studies, break rules on the sly, deceive in 
their recitations. The teacher says, " Close 
your books,'* and they pretend to do so, but 
keep their finger in at the place, and when 
the teacher looks the other way, they take 
just a peep, catch a word or so to start them 
in the first sentence when it comes their turn 
to recite. Then they copy each other's ex- 
ercises, aod pretend they studied them out 
when they did not ; stealing somebody else's 
work, — an untruth as well as a theft. It says 
as plainly as words could do, " I studied all 
these things out myself." 

When scholars think they are outwitting 
the teacher, Satan is outwitting them. They 
cheat nobody so badly as they cheat them- 
selves. They are sent to school to get a 
given amount of knowledge from books. 
They will need every bit of it when they 
grow up and begin to do business for them- 
selves. It is as if they had been sent to 



BE HONEST. 55 

gather grain to live on by-and-bye. For fear 
they will not get all they need, people have 
been hired to help them and show them how. 
Too heedless and careless to get the grain, 
they fill their bags with pebbles and put 
the grain on top, so as to make their 
helpers think their bags are full of good 
wheat. Who would be the worst cheated by 
that performance, especially when winter 
comes, and they are hungry for the bread 
that was to have been made out of that 
grain ? Boys who cheat their way through 
college, go through life dunces, with a false 
bit of parchment called a diploma laid away 
somewhere. And the worst of it is, having 
learned to cheat in that way, they may not be 
trusted in anything. I read a good little 
story, the other day, of a German shepherd 
boy who became a great man. His name 
was Gerhardt, and he was very poor. 

One day he was watching his flock, which 
was feeding in the valley, on the borders of 
a forest. A hunter came out of the wood, 
and asked : — 



66 A DOZEN BE' 8 FOE BOYS. 

*' How far is it to the nearest village ? 

" Six miles, sir," replied the boy, " but 
the road is only a sheep track and very easily 
missed." 

The hunter glanced at the crooked track, 
and then said : — 

"My lad, I am hungry, tired, and thirsty. 
I have lost my companion and missed my 
way. Leave your sheep, and show me the 
road. I will pay you well." 

"I cannot leave my sheep, sir," replied 
the boy. " They would stray into the forest, 
and be eaten by the wolves or stolen by 
robbers." 

"Well, what of that?" replied the hun- 
ter, " they are not your sheep. The loss of 
one or more wouldn't be much to your mas- 
ter, and I'll give you more money than you 
ever earned in a whole year." 

" I cannot go, sir," rejoined Gerhardt, very 
firmly ; " My master pays me for my time, 
and he trusts me with his sheep. If I were 
to sell my time, which does not belong to 



BE HONEST. 57 

me, and the sheep should get lost, it would 
be just the same as if I stole them." 

"Well," said the hunter, "will you trust 
the attention of the sheep to me while you 
go to the village and get me some food and 
drink, and a guide ? I will take good care of 
them for you." 

The boy shook his head. " The sheep do 
not know your voice, and " — here Gerhardt 
stopped speaking. " Sir," he went on, slowly, 
" you tried to make me false to my trust, and 
wanted me to break my duty to my master. 
How do I know you would keep your word 
to me?" 

The hunter laughed ; but he felt that the 
boy had silenced him. He said : " I see, my 
lad, that you are a good, faithful boy. I will 
not forget you. Show me the road and I 
will try to follow it myself." 

Gerhardt now offered the humble contents 
of his wallet to the hungry man, who, coarse 
as they were, ate them gladly. Presently, to 
his surprise, he found that the hunter was 



58 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

the Grand Duke, who owned all the country 
round. The Duke was so pleased with the 
boy's honesty, that he sent for him shortly 
after,, and had him educated. In after years 
Gerhardt became a very rich and powerful 
man, and he remained honest and true to his 
dying day. 

It is said that Gen. Harrison had some 
choice grapes growing in his garden, and the 
gardener complained to him that the boys 
took them on Sunday while the family were 
at church, and proposed to get a savage dog 
to guard them. " Better get a good Sunday- 
school teacher," said the General. " He will 
take care of the boys and the grapes, too.'* 
If we can make all our boys thoroughly hon- 
est in little things, there will be small risk 
but that men will be honest in their bus- 
iness, and the world will soon be better than 
it is now. 



CHAPTER VI. 

BE GENTLE. 

A Christian gentleman is more admired 
and respected than any other man. I can 
tell you best what I mean by a gentleman, 
by telling you what I do not mean. He is 
not a dude, one who gives all his time to 
making himself look pretty, and succeeds 
only in appearing ridiculous. He is not one 
of those who is untidy and careless, whose 
clothes have a disagreeable odor, whose hair 
sticks out every way, whose teeth are dark 
and stained, whose breath is foul with to- 
bacco, whose hands are grim), with the nails 
unscraped and black lines at their ends, whose 
language is coarse and loud, whose manners 
are rough. In crossing over to Brooklyn in 
the Bridge cars, one sees persons in expen- 
sive male attire, silk hats, polished boots, 
59 



60 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

kid gloves and all, who almost push over 
women and children in their hurry to get 
into the train. The conductor called out to 
these men one day, " Hurry up, gents, or 
the women will get all the seats." They are 
certainly anything but gentlemen. A poor 
woman who has been ironing all day, carry- 
ing home her basket of clothes, may be 
crowded aside by them and made to stand on 
her tired feet, with her back aching, while 
these ungentlemanly men keep their seats. 
What boy in his senses would want to be- 
come such a gentleman as that ? 

Gentle boys become gentle-men. As well 
try to make an eagle out of a snapping 
turtle as a gentleman out of a rough, coarse 
boy. He may know how to dress well, keep 
his person tidy and neat, bow handsomely, 
say polite things ; but when he is off guard 
a slangy word or a rough act will show his 
nature, just as the bray of the donkey be- 
trayed the animal wrapped in the lion skin. 

To learn to play the piano well one must 



BE GENTLE. 61 

begin as soon as he can tiptoe up to touch 
the ke} T s. Glass blowers will not attempt to 
teach their difficult business to any but boys 
who are brought up in their families and be- 
gin to play with melted glass as soon as they 
can handle anything. 

The thirty-five thousand soldiers with 
which Alexander the Great conquered the 
Persian Empire, were born in camp and used 
to warlike weapons from their babyhood. So 
if one would be a gentleman he must begin to 
be gentle when he is a boy. I know a man 
who dresses very nicely, and appears very 
fine and polite. I heard a lady say, " You 
need not tell me that that man is a Chris- 
tian. I heard him halloo at his boy in such a 
rough way the other morning that I know 
he is no gentleman." If you want to grow 
up right in this matter, and I am sure you 
do, let me tell you a few things that you 
must avoid. First, don't brag. If I should 
wn the g, into a y, as it would be easy to do 
by leaving the head open a trifle, I might 



62 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

not be wide of the mark. Bragging is & 
kind of human braying. Longfellow says: 

"Big words do not smite like war-clubs, 
Boastful breath is not a bowstring ; 
Taunts are not as sharp as arrows. 
Deeds are better things than words are, 
Actions mightier than boastings." 

Bragging does not add in the least to 
one's strength. One is not so apt to throw 
another with whom he is wrestling if he 
wastes breath beforehand by telling the 
great things he is going to do. If you are 
to do a thing, go on and do it ; don't spend 
your time in making people believe that you 
can do something wonderful. One success- 
ful act is worth a bushel of words. 

Don't use slang. The heathen seldom tell 
the truth, and they do not expect to be be- 
lieved, so they heap up oaths to try to make 
what they say seem true. Jesus said, 
" Swear not at all ; but let your yea be yea, 
and your nay, nay." In other words, tell 
the thing just as it is, and let it go at that. 



BE GENTLE. 63 

People will soon come to know that they can 
rely on what you say. Some who think it 
wicked to swear, say things that are own 
cousins to " swear words," to give what they 
say a stout sound. That is certainly foolish 
and vulgar. Some people think it is no mas- 
ter how boys talk. Girls must be kept nice 
and sweet, but boys may be as coarse and hate- 
ful as they please. I do not think any such 
thing about the boys. They are every bit 
as good as girls at the outset, and we must 
help keep them so. It does not make a boy 
weak to keep him clean. 

In Italy they have a superstition that it 
will spoil their babies' sense if they wash 
their heads, and you can imagine how untidy 
the children of the poor people are. Some 
seem to be afraid that if their boys are clean 
in their speech, they will be " milksops " as 
they say, always " tied to their mother's apron 
strings." That is a trick of Satan to spoil 
the poor boys. It doesn't add an iota to a 
boy's importance to have him go through 



64 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

the house like a cyclone, slinging down his 
books for his poor, tired mother to pick up, 
leaving doors open, or shutting them with a 
bang that sets the nerves of invalids, old 
people, and babies aching for half an hour. 
If you can't think of anything to do to 
make people happy, don't torture them with 
rough, coarse ways. When some boys come 
into the house, peace and comfort seem to 
fly out of the window. You might as well 
have a young bear or hyena roaring about 
the place. It would be impossible to make 
a gentleman out of such a fellow as that. 

Some people try to make out that boys are 
by nature rough and hard. I do not believe 
any such thing. They think it will make 
them " Miss Nancyish," as they say, to be 
gentle and quiet. Not a bit of it! Boys 
must be Christians and go to Heaven as well 
as other folks. Suppose the lawless young- 
sters were to die in the midst of their rude- 
ness, what a figure they would cut among 
the good people of the other world. Death 



BE GENTLE. 66 

would not change them. We must live here 
as we hope to do in Heaven. 

It makes people all the stronger to know 
how to hold still. If a man is fighting for 
his life, the chances will be a great deal bet- 
ter if he holds himself steady to the very in- 
stant when it is best for him to strike, rather 
than to brag and flounce, beating about right 
and left, spending his strength before the 
enemy comes near enough to be hit. 

Make as much noise as you like out in the 
woods, with your singing, elocution les- 
sons, play, or whatever it is proper to 
be merry about ; but let the Golden Rule 
keep you gentle and quiet when you are 
around among folks who do not enjoy your 
racket. Suppose you were ill and shut up in 
the house day after day, head and back ach- 
ing, how would you like to have a young 
tornado come tearing through the place, 
making every nerve tingle with pain ? 

Coarseness is a mark of selfishness. It comes 
from giving way to an impulse to do a thing 



66 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

that you happen just then to take a fancy to, 
no matter whether others like it or not. Self- 
fish boys usually become selfish men. Chris- 
tians must be like Jesus. Every Christian 
boy ought to be as He was when He was in 
the world. I have no doubt He was as 
merry and bright as any boy in Nazareth. 
He Himself made the love of fun, and He 
wants boys to be as full of play and frolic as 
lambs and colts ; but I cannot believe He 
meant them to be as rough and cruel as 
bears and tigers. 

A Sunday-school superintendent in New 
York City was showing his mission scholars 
one day a picture of Jesus blessing the chil- 
dren. He told them that if they would call 
to Jesus, He would put His arms around 
them just as He did about one of the little 
boys in the picture. The next week he was 
out calling on his scholars, and one woman 
said to him, " My little Sammy was converted 
in the Sabbath-school last Sunday." " Why, 
what makes you think so ? " " Well ; he 



BE GENTLE. 67 

said he asked Jesus, and He put His arms 
around him while you were talking. " k4 Does 
he act like a Christian ? " asked the superin- 
tendent. " Yes ; all the week when he has 
come home from school, the first thing, he 
has asked me if lie should not rock the cradle 
to keep baby still while I get supper. And 
if I ask him to go to the hydrant for water, 
or out after coal, he doesn't snarl or grumble 
as he used to do." " That looks as though 
he were converted," said the gentleman. The 
next Sabbath he was explaining to the school 
from the map, the distance from Jerusalem 
to Bethlehem. Little Sammy sat before 
him, and was thinking of the picture that was 
there the Sunday before. Then he remem- 
bered how sweetly the Lord Jesus came into 
his heart, and he called out, " He did forgive 
my sins last Sunday. I did holler out to Him 
in my heart, and He put His arm around me, 
and I know I am His boy now." Do you 
see ? Jesus, coming into Sammy's heart, had 
made him gentle and kind to his mother, and 



63 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

thoughtful of her in her hard work. If you 
would grow to be the man that shall please 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and do what He wants 
you to do in the world, you must begin by 
being a gentle boy. 

As things go generally, boys haven't much 
to make them kind. A little fellow has a 
kitten given to him and he thinks quite too 
much of it for the kitten's good. He lugs it 
around by the ears and the nape of the neck, 
pulls its tail and whiskers, as the fancy takes 
him. The poor thing becomes rough and 
spiritless, its life quite teased out of it. 
He might just as easily be taught to be 
gentle, and kind to it, as to be allowed 
to handle it so carelessly. The kitten 
passes away, and he wants a tougher play- 
fellow. He is given a puppy. He pulls its 
ears, and it takes its own part, and snaps at 
him with its sharp teeth. He gets angry, 
and kicks and cuffs it. The puppy stands 
up for its rights ; the boy brings it to terms. 
Then he begins to enjoy the fun of making 



BE GENTLE, 69 

things stand around. As he gets larger, he 
ties a tin can to a dog's tail, throws stones at 
the birds, begins to use a bow and arrows, 
popgun or toy pistol ; but there is no fun 
with any of them unless he hits something. 
He robs birds' nests, drowns cats, teases his 
sisters, torments other girls, plays tricks on 
everybody, and calls its sport to see people 
hobbling off rubbing their shins, and groaning 
over the tumble he has given them. 

I was at the stockade prison, where the 
Indians of the Minnesota massacre were shut 
up. Going around on the walk that was 
built near the top, where we could look down 
on them, I saw one little fellow, as lithe as a 
willow, as straight as a poplar. He picked 
up a stone and threw it right into the eye of 
another. The child ran to its mother, shriek- 
ing with pain, but the older little savage 
pranced about in great glee. He seemed to 
think he had done a splendid thing. And I 
thought, " You will be scalping white settlers 
yet, and be swinging from the scaffold, as 
likely as not." 



70 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

Have you ever heard of the Thugs in 
India? They are murderers from father to 
son. When they go out on one of their ex- 
cursions they take their boys along to teach 
them how to get their living by murder. 
You are not [ndians or Thugs. You do not 
mean to live by savagery or murder. You 
mean to be Christians and go to Heaven. 
Now you must act accordingly. If your 
parents will not hold you in as they do your 
sisters, hold yourself in. If they fail to 
teach you to be kind, teach yourself. Make 
yourself do things to make others happy. 

Never do anything to others that you 
do not want them to do to you. There 
is trouble enough in this world with- 
out your making any more. Boys, some- 
times make others very uncomfortable, for 
fun, and they get come up with in a 
disagreeable way. I remember a story 
of a boy who was out with a couple of 
his playmates for a Saturday afternoon. 
They had walked to a little village, and he 



BE GENTLE. 71 

stepped into a shop while the others stood 
outside. He knew they were talking of 
buying a pie, and he thought it would be a 
good joke to put a pebble into the one they 
would probably take. He looked around 
the shop and could see no one, so he raised 
the crust of the pie and slipped the pebble 
into it. Then he went out and said, " Come 
boys, aren't you going in to get a pie?" 
They went in and bought one, and he looked 
every minute to see one of them get the 
pebble between his teeth ; but the lady who 
came out of the room back of the shop, 
asked him if he wouldn't have a pie, and 
took one down from the shelf. He bought 
it, and bit into it with a good deal of 
strength, and the next minute he shrieked 
with pain, for he himself had gotten the pie 
that had the pebble in it. As soon as he 
could get quiet enough to listen, the lady 
told him that she was sitting in the back 
room, but could see what he was doing, and 
she saw him put the pebble into the pie. 



72 A DOZEN BE* S FOR BOYS. 

She put it up on the shelf, intending to take 
it down and sell it to him, as she had done. 
He had broken one of his teeth on it and 
he went home with his mouth bound up 
with a handkerchief, his jaw aching severely 
and his conscience smiting him for having 
tried to play that trick on his playmate. 

Instead of always thinking what you like, 
and what you want, think what others pre- 
fer. Try to help others have a good time. 
Begin with the one you love best, your 
mother. You get home from school and 
seem to be full of pins and needles with the 
pent-up mischief that's in you, from having 
been kept still all day; you want to run, 
and jump, and kick about. It seems only 
fair that a boy should have some fun ; other 
boys do. You hear the whistle, and a call 
which only boys can give, and you feel quite 
like what the Bible says of the wild ass' 
colt. Now wait a moment. Poor, dear 
mother has been sewing all day; her eyes 
are tired, her head aches. She has had all 



BE GENTLE. 73 

she could do to get the pants done for you 
to wear to school next day. Boys' pants 
wear out so fast ; and their toes work out of 
their stockings in so short a time. Now will 
you go to the door and answer the boy's call 
for a scamper or a run through the field, a 
romp on the hay, to look after some won- 
derful thing that only a boy could conjure 
up ? No ; not if you mean to be kind to 
your mother. Let the boy whistle out there 
till he gets tired of it, and goes home to 
help his own mother. Offer to kindle the 
fire and get the water to fill the tea-kettle. 
You can find plenty of things to do to make 
the load lighter and her heart happier. She 
will live longer for your having lifted the care 
off her. Mothers often wear out with hard 
work, and when they die they leave their 
boys lonely enough. 

Uncle Tom said, " The Lord gives some 
good things over and over, but he never 
gives a good mother but once/' I know a 
man who is doing a great deal of good in 



74 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

the world, who used to do every little kind 
thing lie could to make his mother happy. 
He would go without candies and oranges, 
and air the nice things boys like, to buy some 
little delicacy for her. When she was ill he 
would sit by the bed, brush away the flies, 
get fresh, cold water to bathe her forehead, 
and would keep the little ones quiet so that 
she could sleep. She is old now, yet she 
loves that boy of hers more than all the 
rest ; she prays for him and watches for his 
coming. He has been a better man all his 
life for having been so kind to his mother. 

When Jesus was a little boy at home with 
Joseph, the carpenter, at Nazareth, He must 
surely have been good to His mother, Mary. 
I can see how He must have sat beside her 
and read to her from the Book, lovely things 
about His Father. I think she must have 
wondered why it rested her so to look into 
His deep, sweet eyes, and listen to His loving 
voice. It was His work to help her, and all 
people, and she was most fortunate to be the 



BE GENTLE. 75 

mother of such a boy. When He hung on 
the cross in that awful agony, He looked 
downward through the darkness, and His 
glazing eyes rested on her pale, tearful face. 
John was the only one of the men brave 
enough to stand by Him. He said to John, 
" Son, behold thy mother " ; and to her, 
44 Woman, behold thy son." And from that 
day John took His place in caring for Mary. 

You must be kind to everybody, not only 
to add to their happiness, but to help them 
to be good, like our Lord. 

Be kind to the old and poor. Never 
laugh at anyone's mishap. It looks funny 
enough to see a boy's heels fly up, and his 
head bump the sidewalk. He looks around 
so foolishly — ashamed of his tumble. Don't 
laugh at him, help him up ; choke down 
the merry feeling, get his scattered things 
together and start him along. Never join in 
the laugh at a poor drunkard's folly. What 
if it were your father ? 

When anyone is in trouble, try by kind- 



76 A DOZEN BITS FOR BOYS. 

ness to make it a little easier to bear. Jesus 
said, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of the least of these ye did it unto Me." 
He spent all His life in doing good to others. 
Great crowds came to Him, miserable look- 
ing creatures. Some of them had eyes out, 
or hands off; they were leprous. Some 
came hobbling on crutches, some were 
carried on beds. They came in every way 
that miserable people could come. He 
healed them all. They were not all thank- 
ful, either. One day ten men that were lep- 
ers came, dreadful beings, no doubt. When 
they were healed they all went away but one, 
who returned to give thanks. And Jesus 
said, "Were there not ten cleansed? but 
where are the nine?" His heart was so full 
of kindness that it was like the overflow of 
a fountain, that slips away through the 
meadow, making a path of greenness where- 
ever it goes. Birds sip its waters, lambs 
drink them ; it spreads its bosom for the 
ducks to play upon ; little buff-colored gos- 



BE GENTLE. 77 

lings come and swim in it. It sings its song 
as it slides over the pebbles, and never waits 
for an " I thank you." It seems to get full 
of gladness by giving to others. 

Christ's Spirit in our hearts will make us 
kind ; the lack of it leaves us hard and harsh, 
and we will make others unkind by our very 
roughness. One unruly cow in a pasture 
will make all the others hateful. One cross, 
selfish child will put a wire edge on a whole 
family. It is a poor rule that doesn't work 
both ways. One sweet, kind child will help 
all the rest to be good. Jesus notices every 
kind act we perform. He said, If you give 
only a cup of cold water in My name you 
shall not lose your reward. May we not live 
so there will be much more happiness and 
less sorrow in the world for our having been 
in it? 

There is in St. Petersburg a lady who is 
very rich and good; Her name is the Coun- 
tess Bobrinskoi. A gentleman who was the 
tutor of one of her children told me that a 



18 A DOZEN BE'S FOB BOYS. 

servant came to his room one day, and said 
the Countess wished to see him in the 
library. When he went into the room, he 
found her looking very sad. Her little Paul 
sat there, a child of seven or eight years look- 
ing very much ashamed, and yet evidently 
quite unwilling to do what his mother de- 
sired. " O Mr. Meyer," said the Countess 
when the tutor entered, " Little Paul has 
killed one of the Lord's flies, and he isn't 
sorry, and I wish you would pray that God 
would show him how wrong it is to take the 
life of one of the happy little creatures that 
He has made." They knelt down. The 
Countess prayed, and then the tutor prayed, 
and after some time little Paul's naughty heart 
yielded, and he said, " Dear Lord Jesus, for- 
give me that I have taken the life of one of 
your little flies : I cannot give it back, and it 
never can be happy any more in the sunshine. 
And if Thou wilt forgive me this time, I'll 
never do so again, as long as I live." This 
may seem strange to you, but I think if boys 



BE GENTLE. 79 

were taught to be as kind and gentle as that, 
there would be a great deal less cruelty and 
unhappiness in the world. 



CHAPTER VII. 

BE POLITE. 

I AM sorry to say that boys sometimes have 
considerable to make them rude. Some 
people seem to think it doesn't make much 
difference how a boy acts. They all have to 
be about so contrary and coarse, and they 
will get over it after a while. 

We are seldom better than we are expected 
to be. But you must not get discouraged 
and think there is no use, you cannot do 
right, no matter how hard you try. 

Sometimes boys are pushed around as if 
they hadn't any feeling. No matter ; they 
are only boys. The church may be crowded 
of a Sabbath evening. Some one says, 
"Boys, come up front here, and sit on the 
pulpit stairs, or about the altar rail." Or, 
perhaps, some good - natured man says : 
80 



BE POLITE. 81 

" Here, Bubby, let me sit down and I'll take 
you on my knee." The more fortunate boys 
are giggling on the sly,- at his expense. The 
poor child's face is as red as a peony, for he 
knows how they will plague him the next 
day. I don't know just how I would man- 
age, but I am sure I would never put a boy 
in so embarrassing a place if I could help it. 
If I had to take one's seat in a church, or in 
a street car, I wouldn't do it as a matter ot 
course. I would thank him as certainly for 
giving me his place, as if he were the Prince 
of Wales. My heart has ached sometimes 
when I have seen a set of boys in church 
made to give up their places and told to go 
and sit where older people didn't like to go. 
I could see that some of them had come in 
their every-day clothes, and with their hair 
tousled. They had played so long they 
hadn't time to go home and fix themselves 
up, and they didn't care to go where every- 
body could see the patches on their pants 
and jackets. I have watched the boys and 



82 A DOZEN BITS FOR BOYS. 

seen them wriggle about, and look embar- 
rassed, and laugh sheepishly ; and then some 
boldfaced one would start for the door, and 
they would all follow him out. I could hear 
their shouts and laughter on the church 
steps, as they started off for some mischief. 
" O dear, dear," I have thought, " what will 
become of us if we don't treat boys with 
more respect, and teach them to respect 
themselves ? " 

The trouble is, many of the people think 
that one can make just as much money to be 
rude and rough, and get on as well in the 
world. They tell stories about this, that, and 
the other, rich, old curmudgeon who growled 
out his good things, and did people kind- 
nesses in an odd way that made everybody 
wince and laugh at the same time. So-and- 
so made a fortune, though he was as rough 
as a shell bark hickory, or a chestnut burr. 
They give boys to understand that it doesn't 
matter how rude they are. "Boys will be 
boys, you know ; they'll come out all right 
in the end." 



BE POLITE. 83 

But thoughtful people take as much pains 
with boys as with girls to make them nice 
and polite. There was Susanna Wesley, a 
poor woman with a very large family. It says 
upon her tombstone that she had nineteen 
children. She trained them as carefully as 
the cadets at West Point are drilled, and yet 
so kindly that Dr. Clark says, " They had 
the reputation of being the most loving 
family in the County of Lincoln." " She 
used to write to her " Jackey and Charlie," 
and help them with their Greek and Latin, 
and tell them how to serve and trust the 
Lord. You may be sure that there was no 
rudeness among the nineteen chicks, big and 
little, in the Epworth Rectory. " Jackey 
and Charlie " were never howling around the 
streets at night, prowling about in search of 
some mean trick to play, or mischief to do. 
When they grew up they were sent to the 
University at Oxford, and they joined some 
other young men in trying to help each 
other live good lives. The other students 



84 A DOZEN BE' 8 FOR BOYS. 

made fun of them, and called them the 
"Holy Club," and "Methodists," because 
they lived so methodically, that is, so much 
by good rules. I am afraid it would bother 
some of us to keep up with them in good 
works, though that was several years before 
they were converted. 

The ancient Egyptian kings were so par- 
ticular with their children, that they would 
not allow any but people of noble blood to 
serve them as menials, for fear their servants' 
rough, common life would make the young 
princes and princesses coarse and common. 

We do not all have Susanna Wesleys for 
mothers, or Pharaohs for fathers, but if there 
is no one wise enough to start us right, we 
must do our best to make ourselves what we 
ought to be. It is with this the same as in 
being honest and gentle. If one would be so 
when he is a man, he must begin when he is 
a boy. 

People ought not to let their boys slip 
around into all sorts of mean places where it 



BE POLITE. 85 

would spoil girls to go. Boys are human as 
well as girls, and whatever is bad for girls, is 
bad for them. God didn't make two Bibles, 
one for women and the other for men. He 
wants one set to be just as good as the other. 
In the book called "Adam Bede," Mrs. Poyser 
says, " Women had to be made silly to match 
the men." I would turn it around and say, 
"Men must be made good to match the 
women." To make men good we must begin 
with the boys. 

A German professor used to say, " I always 
take off my cap before my class, for in them 
I see the teachers and law-givers of the next 
generation." We will keep our sons good as 
well as our daughters, that the next genera- 
tion may be right. Then there will not be 
three women in the church to one man, and 
twenty-five times as many men in the State's 
Prison as there are women. 

We must be polite because the Lord com- 
mands it. He says, "Be courteous." A 
wicked man once said of a church-member, 



86 A DOZEN BKS FOR BOYS. 

** You need not tell me that he is a Christian ; 
he is too rude." Without thinking, he ad- 
mitted that our religion must make us kind 
and polite. The Bible tells us about a dead 
fly spoiling the perfume. One little defect, 
like rudeness, may set people against us and 
make them think we are not Christians. So 
we must be careful of little as well as large 
things. Unless we have polite ways, that 
please people, we may lose our chance to 
help them to be good. 

If we are never taught politeness, we must 
teach ourselves. We would not go all our 
lives without learning to read, even if we had 
never been sent to school. We w r ould get 
books and pick out the letters. We would 
teach ourselves to write by making chalk 
marks on the sidewalks, rather than go 
through life without knowing how. We 
may teach ourselves to be polite by seeing 
how polite people act. 

True politeness comes from a wish to 
make other people happy. Everybody feels 



BE POLITE. 87 

better to be spoken to in a pleasant way. 
You do not like to be ordered to do a 
thing. You would rather be asked as if it 
were a favor, " Will you please do so-and-so ? " 
Perhaps we are careful to be polite to 
older people, but do not mind how we speak 
to those who are younger than ourselves. 
You do not feel comfortable when older 
people speak abruptly to you. Younger 
children and servants do not enjoy to have 
you speak rudely to them. It is a good rule 
never to order anybody to do a thing, but 
always to ask if they please, even on the 
playground where boys are apt to be as much 
like young bears as they can. " Give' me 
that ball, I tell you ! or I'll knock your 
head off ! " Of course, the other boy knows 
that you do not mean to hurt him. He will 
tease you by keeping it awhile, even after 
you have said "Please"; but you will feel 
much more like a Christian if you keep your 
patience and good-nature, and are not mean 
and rude because others are. 



88 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

Some children seem to think that the 
Lord Jesus never pays attention to them ex- 
cept when they are in meeting, or saying 
their prayers. They forget that he looks over 
their shoulders in school and sees whether 
they are honest or not ; He goes out upon 
the playground with them and hears every 
rude word. I wish you would stop reading 
long enough to ask Him to make you under- 
stand that truth. I am sure it will help yo u 
to be a more constant and true Christian. 

To make others happy you must be polite 
to them. You must thank them for what 
they do, even when you pay them for doing 
it. Little polite words are like flowers in 
a room. They are not necessary. You 
would not be cold or hungry without them, 
yet they make the room sweet and pleasant. 
Maybe I am mistaken. Your heart might 
be cold and hungry without the flowers or 
the polite words. At any rate, I would not 
try to get along without either. 

Asking to be excused when you leave the 



BE POLITE. 89 

table before the rest ; begging pardon 
when you stumble against one, or put him to 
the trouble of repeating what he has said 
once ; uncovering your head when you come 
into the house, or speak to older people; 
being careful not to interrupt them when 
they are talking or reading, nor to speak to 
them in a loud, abrupt way, nor to run be- 
fore them nor stare at them. All these 
things you must remember to avoid. Doing 
so, you will make others happier. 

In a parlor one evening where there was a 
party, a man who was very bashful missed 
the chair, and sat down on the floor. Every- 
body laughed except a Frenchman, who ran 
to him, helped him up, hoped he had not 
hurt himself, and began talking with him in 
so bright and pleasant a way that he soon 
forgot the mishap, and the pain of his em- 
barrassment. 

If one is inclined to be polite, it is very 
apt to show itself at the table ; so we must 
be specially careful how we behave there. 



90 A DOZEN BE* H FOR BOYS. 

If you make a supping noise when you take 
soup from the spoon, or smack your lips, or 
chew your food with your lips apart, or eat 
like a cat munching a mouse, or take too 
large mouthfuls, or reach as far as you can 
to help yourself instead of asking for the 
food to be passed ; if you do these, and sim- 
ilar things, people will think, " Poor fellow, 
he couldn't have had a very careful mother 
— he doesn't know any better." You must 
eat as silently as you can ; keep your place 
as free from slops and spots as possible ; 
avoid everything that would be disagreeable 
to one sitting beside you. 

If you wish to make yourself agreeable to 
others, you will hardly fail to find out how 
to be polite. When you do your best, you 
must ask the Lord Jesus to help you. He 
would have you do all the good you can. 
He doesn't want you to shut up your own 
way by rudeness. He will show you in 
your heart how to be truly polite and 
agreeable that you may do the more good in 
the world. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



BE INDUSTRIOUS. 



I AM quite afraid that very few lazy peo- 
ple will be able to get into Heaven. Jesus 
said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
work." There is so much to be done for the 
Lord, that everybody ought to be at it. If 
some fail to do their part, others will have to 
do more than their share. You know it isn't 
fair to make somebody else do their own 
work and ours too. 

It is very silly to be ashamed of work, be- 
cause one thinks he has money enough to 
keep him above it. I do not know any such 
thing as being above work. Jesus washed 
the disciples' feet, and that was usually done 
by the meanest slave. He said, " What I do 
ye know not now, but ye shall know here- 
after." He saw that the time would come 

91 



92 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOTH. 

when people would be ashamed of plain, 
honest, hard work. He wanted to teach 
them better. 

No one ought ever to be without some- 
thing good to do. Do you remember that 
little rhyme, 

"Satan finds some mischief still 
For idle hands to do." 

An idle brain is his workshop. Lazy boys 
make lazy men. I used to know a man 
whose father was rich when he was a boy, 
and who was not taught to work. He was 
kept in school, and after school hours he 
would ride about the country on his pony, 
and do what he pleased. When he was quite 
grown up, his father lost his property, and 
then it was too late for him to learn to work 
as he ought to have done. He never seemed 
to have energy enough to amount to anything 
Somebody else always had to work hard to 
support him. 

I know rich men's sons who will hardly 
black their own boots, and yet their fathers 



BE INDUSTRIOUS. 93 

work harder than any draymen or hod-car- 
riers. They go to their offices early and 
stay late, getting wrinkled and gray trying 
to earn money enough to keep up the ele- 
gance of the house, and give their children 
fine living. What could such boys do to 
help along? It would be some help for 
them to show even a disposition to do some- 
thing. It would give their fathers new 
courage to know that someone was getting 
ready to take the load when it must fall 
from their shoulders, someone who could be 
trusted more certainly than hired people 
could be. 

The habit of industry in a boy is worth 
more to him than a fortune. Money may 
take wings, but the habit will remain. 

Very few rich men's sons ever amount to 
anything. They lack the habit of work. 
The people who come to the most in every 
line, are those who have had to learn to take 
care of themselves early. The old Jews al- 
ways gave each son a trade. They had a 



94 A DOZEN- BE'S FOR BOYS. 

proverb, "He that does not teach his son C 
trade, teaches him to steal." One of the 
wealthiest Scotch noblemen apprenticed his 
boy to a merchant to learn the tea business. 

Probably you are a poor man's son and 
will have to earn your own living. You 
ought to begin early. In Brittany the peas- 
ants set their little three-years-old children 
taking care of the cattle in the field. 

You may be fond of play and fun, and it 

is all right to have a proper amount of it ; 

but you would not be so mean as to play all 

the time while the rest had to work hard to 

support you. 

" AH work and no play 
Makes Jack a dull boy." 

All play is worse, because it makes a child 
selfish and hateful. Make up your mind 
early what you mean to be when you grow 
up. Learn to do one thing and do it well. 
There is always plenty of employment and 
good pay for first-class workmen. When 
hard times come and some of the men have 



BE INDUSTRIOUS. 9o 

to be turned off, the best ones are kept at 
work. 

Don't allow yourself to get a habit of 
working at one thing awhile, and then put- 
ting it aside half finished and taking up an- 
other. Finish a job, even if you get tired 
of it. 

You are sent to school to make your 
thoughts work. Don't shirk anything that 
the teachers put upon you. Be sure and get 
every lesson well. Your mind is like an un- 
broken colt. A large part of the horse's 
value depends upon how the colt is broken. 
His trainer must carry an even, steady hand 
with him ; he must treat him well ; he must 
make him understand that when he is want- 
ed to do something, the steadier he pulls, 
the better for him, and the sooner he will 
get back to his pasture, or his play. That is 
about the way for you to treat your mind. 
Ten chances to one it will not like to work. 
It will mope over the lesson, and grumble, 
and say it can't do those hard things. It 



96 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

will hang back like a sulky horse, and lie 
down in the harness and pout. Then you 
must say to yourself, "Never mind; this 
work has got to be done, and there is no use 
making a fuss about it; the sooner you go 
about it the better." 

Your mind cannot grow strong without 
work. Did you ever hear of Kaspar Hauser, 
a young German, whom the people found 
when he was grown up? Some enemies had 
taken him and shut him up when he was a 
child, to keep him from inheriting property 
that they wanted, or something of that sort 
— nobody ever found out just what. When 
he escaped from his prison, he knew no more 
than a child three years old. He could say 
only one sentence that the man who brought 
him his food always repeated to him. His 
mind was like a blank book, in which noth- 
ing has been written. He had everything to 
learn. That is the way it would be with us 
if we were not taught ; and the more stead- 
ily we learn, the more will be written in our 
minds. 



BE INDUSTRIOUS. 97 

You hear of self-made, self-taught people. 
That means people who were never sent to 
school as others are. The fact is, no matter 
how many schools or colleges we may be 
sent to, we learn only what we see fit to 
teach ourselves. You know they say, " You 
can drive a horse to water, but you can't 
make him drink after you get him there/' 
You can send children to school, but you 
cannot make them learn unless they have a 
mind to do so. 

When I was teaching, a young man came 
to school who never seemed to learn any- 
thing. His father was a banker, and one of 
the most influential friends of the college. 
The faculty was obliged to take the case up, 
because when the boy was not studying he 
was in mischief, and putting mischief into 
the heads of the others. So we sent word 
to his father, and told him just what his boy 
was doing and not doing. The man had the 
good sense to tell his son that he might have 
bis choice, stay in school and go to work, or 



98 A DOZEN BE'S FOB BOYS. 

go into a blacksmith's shop and learn the 
trade. He made up his mind to stay m 
school, and his lessons were always well 
enough learned after that. You see, you 
can hold your mind to your books and make 
yourself learn in half the time that you use 
for the same lesson when you are careless. 
If you have a habit of working, it will be 
worth everything to you later in life. 

I hope you like to read. Don't allow 
yourself to read chaffy, trashy stuff, papers 
and books that' give you nothing that is 
worth remembering; but teach you, rather, 
to forget. If you eat nuts and candy all 
the time between meals, you will spoil your 
appetite and have no relish for good, solid 
food. Cheap novels are apt to be poisonous. 
They hurt the mind, just as poisons harm 
the body. 

I am sorry that many Sunday-school 
books, even, are light and cheap, not good 
food for the mind. Some of them are quite 
useless. 



BE INDUSTRIOUS. 99 

You must pray about what you read. 
Tell, the Saviour that you want to make the 
most of your mind for His sake. Ask Him 
to help you let hurtful things alone, no mat- 
ter how charming they may appear. He 
will surely aid you in making all you can of 
your mind, and you may grow to be more of 
a man by your own effort and His blessing. 

If you want to be a good, strong Chris- 
tian, you must work to help the souls of 
others. Getting people to love the Lord is 
really the best work and most worth doing, 
You may be ever so rich and learned, but 
unless you work for the Lord, you are a fail- 
ure. The work that you do for Christ is all 
that will count in the life that is to last for- 
ever. 

A few years ago I spent a day with Mrs. 
General Booth, of the Salvation Army. 
She has nine children. Every one of them 
is trained to believe that getting souls to the 
Saviour is the one work that Christians 
ought to be busy upon. She told me that 



100 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

she had to watch her little son, who was 
then about nine years of age, because he 
was delicate in health, and yet he would get 
his lessons as quickly as he could, and as 
well, and after he had recited them he would 
take his Testament and tracts, and go about 
in that part of London where they lived, 
trying to get the little boys to read and 
think about the Saviour, and give Him their 
hearts. She said, " If I did not hold him in, 
he would work himself quite ill all the 
time." 

What can you do ? There is plenty you 
can do if only you have the heart to do it. 
I read once of a couple of boys who were 
out at play, and talking about doing some- 
thing for the Saviour. One of them said to 
the other, "There is a poor, old woman 
dying in that tenement house, and nobody 
has been there to tell her that she must be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. 
She has been bad, and she is very poor, and 
somebody ought to go to her." After talk- 



BE INDUSTRIOUS. 101 

ing and praying about it, as they were 
afraid to go up the dark stairway to her 
little attic, they put a ladder upon the wall, 
leaning it against the house, and climbed up 
to the top, and one of them put his face to 
a broken pane of glass and shouted out to 
her, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
thou shalt be saved." The poor, dying 
woman, who had lived all her life in the 
darkness and sorrow of sin, lying there 
alone on her little pile of straw, heard the 
voice, and thought, " Surely the Lord must 
want to save me, for He has sent an angel to 
tell me those words." And just at the last 
she did believe on Jesus and was saved. 

I heard Mrs. Phoebe Palmer tell about a 
little boy in England who went to his pastor 
and asked him if there wasn't something that 
boys could do for the Lord. The pastor 
said, " Why, I don't know. You are too 
small to lead a class, and hardly old enough 
to be a tract distributor. I don't know what 
you can do." " Seems to me," said the child, 



102 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

" there ought to be something for boys to do." 
The pastor thought a few moments and then 
he asked, " Is your seat-mate in school a 
Christian ? " " No, sir, I think not." " Then 
go to work, as the Lord shall show you how, 
and get him converted. Then take another 
and another. I cannot tell you exactly what 
to do, but if you pray, the Saviour will 
show you how to get them saved." Some 
months after that when Mrs. Palmer was 
holding meetings in that place, this little 
boy was lying very ill. The doctors had 
given him up to die. His father went to the 
afternoon meeting, and when he came home 
little Willie roused up and asked his father, 
" Was Neddie Smith at the meeting this 
afternoon ? " " Yes, dear." " Did he give 
his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ ? " " No, 
I think not." " Oh dear," said, the little sick 
boy, " I thought he would." The next day 
his father left him again, and went to the 
afternoon meeting. When he came home 
Willie asked him the same question and ex- 



BE IXDUSTRIOUS. 103 

pressed the same disappointment that his 
little friend was not converted. The third 
day Willie was yet alive, and when his 
father came home from the meeting he asked 
the same question and received a different 
answer. " Yes, Neddie gave his heart to the 
Saviour this afternoon." "I am so glad/' 
was the answer. After he had gone to be 
with Jesus they opened his little box, and 
found a list of forty boys. The first one was 
his seat-mate at the time when he went to the 
pastor and asked for something to do for the 
Lord; the last name was that of Neddie 
Smith. And every boy on the list was con- 
verted. He had taken them one by one in 
faith and prayer, giving them books to read, 
showing them texts of Scripture, praying 
with them when the Lord awakened them, 
and the whole forty had been converted 
through his effort. 

There is plenty for us to do, and the Lord 
will show us how to do it. The only thing 
is to be ready to obey His voice, and let Him 
lead and teach us. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BE PURE. 

Children learn very early the difference 
between clean collars and those that are 
soiled, tidy hands and those that are un- 
washed. It is not so easy for them to know 
the difference between clean thoughts and 
those that are bad, a clean heart and one 
that is impure. 

Some play around in the mud so much 
that they get used to the dirt and don't know 
how bad it is. I suppose poor little fellows 
like that hardly ever get a book of this kind 
to read. The boys to whom I am talking, 
live in clean houses, sleep in clean beds, eat 
at clean tables. They enjoy clean clothes. 
Some of them do not like the bother of keep- 
ing clean, yet they feel better when they are 
bathed, and their hair has been well brushed, 

104 



BE PURE. 105 

and they are nicely dressed. It is a good 
plan to learn to keep your clothes in order. 
It is selfish and mean to dash out into the 
mud, just because one dares do so and takes 
a fancy to that fun. If he gets his clothes 
soiled, his poor mother may have to wash 
them. Somebody has got to rub the dirt 
out of them on the board, and make them 
clean again. If he spoils them, somebody 
has got to work hard to buy more. If the 
boys had to do their own washing, and earn 
their own clothes, I think some of them would 
be a little more careful how they plunge into 
the mud and dirt. 

We must keep our persons clean. Some 
boys do not like the trouble of a bath in the 
house. They like to take a swim in the 
creek or river with other boys, but it is too 
much trouble to wash themselves thoroughly 
from head to foot in the house. 

It makes us respect ourselves to know that 
we are clean under our clothing where the 
dirt doesn't show. I have known boys whose 



106 A DOZEN BE\S FOR BOYS. 

mothers have had trouble even to get them 
into the habit of washing their hands and 
faces clean, and combing their hair every 
time they come to the table. They don't see 
their own tousled heads, and don't know how 
much better they look when they are washed, 
and their hair is brushed. They think their 
mothers are too particular. They don't quite 
make up their minds, " It is the thing to do, 
and I'll form a habit of doing it." 

I hope all the boys who read this book will 
decide to do that and also to brush their 
teeth and clean their nails as often as it is 
necessary. There is no reason why boys' 
hands should be soiled and grimy. You 
would not like to see your sister's hands in 
such a condition. "Oh, girls don't have rough 
play and hard work as boys do." I wouldn't 
play anything that would keep me untidy. 
If my work were dirty, I would wash my 
hands the oftener. 

It is easier to see when the person is un- 
clean than when the heart is impure. An 



BE PURE. 107 

old colored woman said to me once, " Some 
people wash and scrub and scour, but dey 
don't seem to know dat de dirt in de heart 
is a heap worse dan de dirt in de house." 

I£ your hands are soiled and you go into a 
room where people are neat and well dressed, 
you feel like putting your hands behind you, 
because you are ashamed of them. When 
you see and hear things that send unclean 
thoughts racing through your mind, it makes 
you ashamed to go where people are whose 
thoughts are clean and pure. 

I will give you a good rule : Never go 
to places or listen to stories that make your 
cheeks burn. Never let anyone tell you 
anything that you cannot repeat to your 
mother. You are every bit as good as a girl. 
If you would be ashamed to have your sister 
go to a place, don't go there yourself. If it 
would hurt her, it will hurt you. Suppose 
you were killed while you were looking at 
something of which you were ashamed. 
Could you go to the Lord with all those un- 



108 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

clean thoughts in your mind? It is said 
that when a man kills another, the eye holds 
the image of the murderer as the last thing 
it looked upon before the life went out. 
Would you dare go to the Lord with bad 
things in your mind ? Nothing unclean can 
enter heaven. How does Jesus like to have 
the boys that belong to Him go to bad 
places, and listen to bad things? 

Satan has a way of spoiling the Lord's 
boys by getting them to associate with 
others who are full of unclean thoughts. 
They seem nice and dashing. They keep 
their badness hid away. They can do plenty 
of wonderful things and tell the funniest 
stories that ever a boy heard. Bye-and-bye 
they whisper things in your ear that make 
you blush. They make you promise never 
to tell. 

Once there was a little fellow whose mind 
Satan meant to fill with bad thoughts, so he 
could get him to do bad acts. You see, bad 
thoughts are the seeds out of which bad acts 



BE PURE. 109 

grow. When the wicked boy began to 
whisper mean stuff into this boy's ear, he 
said, " I will tell you just the funniest thing, 
but you musn't tell your mother. You 
must promise me that, or I won't tell you." 
"I will do no such thing," said the other 
boy. "If it's too bad for my mother to 
know, it's too bad for me, and I don't want 
to hear it." He kept on the safe side. 
Many a man has been plunged into vice till 
he ruined himself and everybody who cared 
for him, because he listened to vile things 
that were told him when he was a child. 

Never have anything to do with a boy 
who wants to tell you things that you are to 
promise not to tell your mother. You may 
be sure they are harmful. 

I remember a girl who went to school 
where I did when I was a child, who used to 
go into the grass and catch little snakes and 
put them in the bosom of her dress and run 
after the rest of us with their heads sticking 
out. And we were always afraid to have 



110 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

her come near us, for fear she had a snake 
hidden somewhere in her dress. Now these 
people who know bad stories, and whose 
minds are full of such things, are like that 
girl with the snakes. You had better keep 
away from them. 

There are grown people who go around 
among children with books and pictures that 
are as much worse than snakes as you can 
think. They are worse than copper-heads 
and vipers. They bring them to the 
playground where children are, and give 
them their bad pictures and books to look at 
and read. 

I remember a little girl whose face had 
some ugly scars on it. I heard her mother 
say one day that when they first came to the 
country they lived on the prairie and there 
was a spring of water near their house 
where the rattlesnakes used to come to 
drink. One day the child was out playing 
by herself. Her mother heard her whimper- 
ing, and went after her. When she came up 



BE PURE. Ill 

to her she looked up and said, " Mamma, the 
pretty ribbon keeps striking me." The child 
had picked up a young rattlesnake and was 
playing with it, thinking it was a ribbon. 
And if she is alive yet, she carries on her 
face the scars made by the fangs of that 
snake. It had bitten her three or four times 
on her cheek, and it was all they could do to 
keep her from dying with the poison. She 
will carry those scars as long as she lives. 
If we listen to the bad things that Satan 
tells us, through the lips of even wicked 
children, they may make scars on our souls 
that we will carry always. 

We shudder to think how wicked Herod 
was when he sent to Bethlehem and killed 
all the children two years old and under; 
but that was nothing so bad as the people 
are who fill our minds with evil things, for 
they destroy both soul and body in hell. 

Those who make money by selling whis- 
key and tobacco and such things, seem to be 
afraid that they will kill off all their old 



112 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

customers, and run out of business, so they 
try to make the children grow up wicked to 
take the places of those who have been 
killed by vice. One man who gave up this 
wickedness not long ago, said that they paid 
him five dollars a day to stand on a street 
corner near a large schoolhouse, and coax the 
boys to go into' a saloon near by. He would 
get them at first just to step in and see what 
was going on, and how queer the men were 
after they had been drinking. Then he 
would give them a glass of lemonade, into 
which he had put a little whiskey. Then 
possibly he would give them some cider, and 
if they said they didn't want to drink he 
would say, " Nonsense ! Anybody afraid of 
sweet cider ! That couldn't hurt a baby ! " 
Yes ; but nobody can tell just when it stops 
being sweet, and begins to grow hard, and so 
makes people drunk. After he had made 
them like it, he would tell them, " Now you 
must go to your father's pocket and take 
out some money to pay for this, or I'll tell 



BE PURE. 113 

him that you have been here, and then you'll 
get a fine whipping." So he taught them 
not only to drink, but to steal. 

Somebody calls Ale, Beer and Cider, the 
A, B, C, of drunkenness. If people can get 
boys to taste just a little for fun, it will not 
be long till they get the appetite started, and 
then they are gone. 

The people who decoy boys into a saloon 
show them how to play some little games, 
and bet just a little cider or beer that they 
can win. Thus they lead them on till they 
get them started to be gamblers. They 
spend all their pennies in the saloon, and the 
dramseller says, "Never mind; I am not 
afraid to trust a boy like you." The first 
thing he knows the boy is in debt, and then 
they show him how to get the money from 
his father to settle up. The poor child has 
become used to listening to oaths and vile 
stories and has formed an appetite for drink 
and gaming. He has started on the straight 
road to the world of death and darkness. 



114 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

The only way is to keep out of such places. 
Don't go near them any sooner than you 
would go to a smallpox hospital or a den of 
rattlesnakes. 

Satan has another trick for ruining boys. 
He sets somebody to gathering up the old 
cigar stumps that filthy-mouthed fellows 
have thrown away, and all the odds and ends 
of tobacco. Then they are steeped in opium 
and whiskey and make up into cigarettes 
for boys to smoke. They are so poisonous 
that they make the poor fellows dreadfully 
sick till they get used to them. You know 
one can get used to big doses of arsenic if he 
begins by littles. Those vile cigarettes make 
boys love tobacco and whiskey, and they 
have ruined many a life before anybody 
dreamed of the danger. 

Not long ago a company of young men were 
examined for cadetships at West Point. Ten 
out of twenty were rejected by the surgeon, 
because they had what he called the tobacco 
heart. The action of the heart had been in- 



BE PURE. 115 

jured by the smoking of cigarettes; and 
those boys, though they looked as well as 
the others, could not stand the hard work 
that was necessar}^ to become an officer in 
the United States army. 

I told you that it was a good rule never 
to go anywhere or look at any pictures or 
actions, or read any books that you would 
not want your mother to know about. I 
can give you a better one than that. You 
belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. Never go 
anywhere that you cannot ask Him to go 
with you, or do anything that you would 
rather He would not see you doing. That 
rule will keep you sweet and clean. It 
would keep young people away from saloons, 
card-playing, the theatre, opera and skating- 
rink. The Bible says, " Keep thyself pure." 



CHx\PTER X. 

BE ALL EIGHT. 

One Sunday afternoon, in a large meeting, 
I stood by the front pew, slipping off my 
rubbers, when a little boy came down the 
aisle, and stopped beside me, pulling my 
sleeve, to get my attention. I looked round 
at the little fellow. He was about nine 
years old. His face was honest and good, 
his eyes large and earnest. 

I bent toward him to hear what he had to 
say, and he whispered : 

u I was praying in the meeting this fore- 
noon, and the load all rolled off ; and I don't 
know what made it." 

"Well," I said, "I think I know what 
made it. The Lord forgave your sins." 

" I guess He did," was the reply. 

Two weeks later, at the close of another 
116 



BE ALL RIGHT. 117 

such service, we had an inquiry - meet- 
ing. I was going about among those who 
stayed, when there came the same little boy, 
leading a lady by the hand. She was crying 
bitterly. He led her to me, and she said : 

" Tell me, does thee think I could be 
saved ? " 

"Why, to be sure," I replied. " Jesus can 
save anybody." 

" But I am an opium-eater ; and nobody 
thinks I can ever be saved." 

u Oh ! but you can," I said. 

" Here, Anna," I spoke to the young lady 
who was with me. " Please take this lady, 
and pray with her, and tell her how to be- 
lieve in Jesus." 

They talked a little while, and then they 
prayed, and the Lord Jesus forgave the poor 
woman's sins, and then Anna began to pray 
about the opium-eating. That is almost as 
bad as whiskey-drinking ; and if one did 
have all the sins forgiven, and then did that 
very wrong thing, she would be just as bad 



118 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

as ever. So Anna prayed the Lord to take 
the love of opium away from the woman. 
The Lord heard the prayer, and pretty soon 
she said : 

"There! I don't believe I'll ever touch 
that miserable stuff again, as long as I 
live!" 

Then they arose from their knees, and she 
pointed to a man who was sitting a little way 
off, looking very sorrowful. " There," she 
said, " that is my husband. Will thee pray 
for him, that he may be converted, too ? " 

Anna did so ; and the man was converted 
very soon. 

There, you see, our little Quaker boy had 
led both his father and mother to seek our 
Saviour. 

Then he said, "Miss Anna, I know the 
Lord converted my soul that time, when I 
was praying in the meeting, and the load 
rolled off ; and yet I don't believe I am con- 
verted just right yet, 'cause I get spunky 
when the boys at school tease me about it. 



BE ALL RIGHT. 119 

Can the Lord convert folks so that they'll 
never get spunky, no matter how mean the 
rest are? " 

"To be sure He can," was the reply. 
" The Lord Jesus has to take out of our 
hearts all the badness that makes people get 
mad. Some of it stays after they are con- 
verted, and the sooner they go to Him to 
have their hearts washed whiter than snow, 
the better." 

"Won't thee ask Him to save me that 
way ? " he asked earnestly. 

They prayed a few minutes, and the little 
fellow got up from his knees, with his face 
very bright. 

" There ! " he said, u I believe I'm con- 
verted just right now. I won't get spunky 
again, no matter how they abuse me ! " 

And I am very sure he will not, if he keeps 
on trusting the Lord as he did that day. 

You see, Christ took out of his heart all 
the disposition to get mad ; and as long as 
he lets the Saviour keep him, Satan can't 
put any of it back there. 



120 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

Most converted boys kuow what it is to 
find in their hearts something that leads 
them to do wrong in spite of themselves. 
Almost every Sunday they read in the Bible 
and pray and make up their minds to live 
better, but before Monday they are back in 
the old ruts, doing the very same things 
they promised so earnestly never to do again. 
More than one has asked, with the little 
Quaker boy, " Can't Jesus save anybody bet- 
ter than that ? " I am glad I can say, Yes, 
indeed, He can ; and He is glad to do so if 
only we ask Him with our whole heart, and 
trust Him without any doubting. 

There is not one gospel for grown people and 
another for children. The little folks may 
not be able to do the strong, great things, 
but they want to be all right and always 
right as certainly as older ones do, and they 
are quite as apt to be discouraged over their 
own failures. They read the Bible and know 
what kind of Christians they ought to be. 
The Spirit reproves them when they come 



BE ALL RIGHT. 121 

short of duty. Sometimes their consciences 
are even more tender than those of men and 
women. 

They know that it isn't right to fret when 
things go wrong. The Bible says, " Let 
patience have her perfect work." They un- 
derstand that they ought not to get provoked 
when others are mean to them, because the 
Bible says, " Great peace have they that 
love Thy law, and nothing shall offend 
them." " Thou wilt keep him in perfect 
peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because 
he trusteth in thee." 

They would not steal for the world, yet 
they can't seem to help wishing to have 
things that belong to others. That coveting, 
even if they do not give way to it, is break- 
ing one of the commandments. God said, 
" Thou shalt not covet." 

All these things in their hearts make them 
doubt that they are Christians at all. Then 
the Lord blesses them and they are so happy 
they think they will never doubt again. 



122 A DOZEN BJE'S FOR BOYS. 

If Jesus can make them happy and keep 
them so one hour, could He not a whole day ? 
If He could one day, could He not for a 
week, or a month, or a year ? But they 
can't seem to get started right so as to let 
Him keep them all the time. "How can 
you, anyway ? " asks one of my bright-eyed 
little boys. Well ; to begin, it must be just 
as it was when you were converted. You 
cannot do anything yourself to get the sin 
out of your soul. Jesus has to do it all. 
They were told to call His name Jesus be- 
cause He should save His people from their 
sins. John said, " If we confess our sins, he 
is faithful and just to forgive iis our sins and 
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 
That means that Jesus can take out of your 
heart all your love for wrong things, that 
which makes it so hard to resist the temp- 
tation to do them. The spiteful disposition, 
the quick temper, the proud spirit will all be 
gone, and the heart will be filled with love. 
Even a child can love the Lord with all his 



BE ALL RIGHT. 123 

might, mind and strength, and his neighbor 
as himself. 

It will make you unlike other boys, even 
some of the good ones, to be just such a 
Christian as Jesus wants you to be. The 
Lord says, " Come out from among them and 
be ye separate, and I will receive you, and 
you shall be my sons and daughters." That 
will set you to reading the Bible when per- 
haps the other boys are reading novels. You 
must be praying when they are strolling 
about nights and getting into all sorts of 
mischief. It may keep you quiet when 
every other fellow is bragging and blustering 
at the top of his voice. They may make fun 
of you for refusing to go to places and do 
things they cannot see one bit of harm in. 

You must make up your mind to please 
Jesus if it displeases every friend you have 
in the world. You must want everything to 
go God's way, even if it should send you off 
to be a missionary in Africa. 

I remember one little fellow who was con- 



124 A D0ZE2? BE'S FOE BOYS. 

-verted and tried his best to be good and do 
right ; but he had a hard time of it. One 
summer evening he was as cross as a small 
bear, snarling and growling about every 
little thing that didn't please him. It was 
quite discouraging, but after he had gone to 
bed, I went around that side of the house 
with a friend, and we stood near his window 
looking at the north star and the dipper. We 
heard a low sound from his room, and listen- 
ed. There he was praying right along, asking 
the Lord to forgive him for all his naughti- 
ness, and trying his best to get everything 
settled and right before he went to sleep. 
If he had given up all the disposition to do 
wrong, and had trusted Jesus to stand beside 
him all the time, he might have had it all 
over and been fast asleep hours sooner than 
he was. 

Some people make hard work of trusting 
the Lord Jesus. All that we have to do is, 
after we have given up and confessed that 
our way is wrong and we do not want it any 



BE ALL RIGHT, 125 

more, then to stop trying and just let Him 
save us, and believe that He does every 
minute. 

Did you ever float in the water. Of course 
you have. You threw yourself over back- 
ward and held your breath, and went under 
all out of sight, but you came up again on 
yotr back, and the water held you. As long 
as you lay straight in the water, and kept 
your hands under or beside you, and didn't 
try to help yourself, there was no danger of 
your sinking, no matter how deep the water 
was. The minute you began to struggle and 
try to do something for yourself, your head 
would go under, and } r ou would have to 
flounder to get upon your feet or to begin to 
swim. We have to do something like that 
when we believe in Jesus. After you have 
given up all to Him, and have stopped trying 
to save yourself, He will take you and wash 
your heart whiter than snow. 

I remember a. little girl who was praying 
in our Thursday night prayer-meeting once. 



126 A DOZEN BITS FOR BOYS. 

She said in her prayer, " Lord Jesus, make 
our hearts as clean and white as the snow. 
O yes, dear Saviour, and whiter than the 
snow, for that has little specks in it." The 
Lord will take all the little specks out of our 
hearts if we will trust Him. Then He can 
keep us loving the Bible, and praying, so that 
every day we will grow more and more like 
Him. 



CHAPTER XL 

BE HAPPY. 

Some people think that if you have a 
happy disposition, you will be happy any- 
way ; but if you are born peevish and fretful, 
you will stay so as long as you live. I do 
not believe any such thing. What religion 
does for us is to change our dispositions. To 
be sure, there are those who are naturals- 
amiable and cheerful, who seem to need less 
grace to make them contented than the sour 
ones do, though it is probable they have 
other sins to get rid of that are quite as 
troublesome. I know people who were born 
with the " blues " but who have been as 
bright as a June day ever since they have 
trusted the Lord to keep them cheerful and 
happy. 

It goes a good ways when people set their 
157 



128 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

minds to make the best of everything. But 
when they have ugly tempers, that come 
snarling up out of their hearts, determined 
to get out and scratch somebody, or have to 
set their teeth together, or hold their lips 
close, to keep the ugly words from flying out, 
they feel that they must have the Lord's help 
to keep them from being mean. 

It is better not to let the ugly things get 
out to tear somebody's feelings all to tatters ; 
yet after all, one knows that the hateful 
thoughts are back there, and that makes him 
miserably uncomfortable. 

The fact is, we cannot make ourselves 
happy any more than we can change the color 
of our eyes or the shade of our hair. The 
Lord must do it if it is done at all. 

A little boy who wanted very much to do 
something that his mother had forbidden, 
was grieved over the matter. "Mother," he 
asked, " what makes wicked things so lovely? " 
The child did not know enough to under- 
stand that that was one of Satan's stories,. 



BE HAPPY. 129 

Jesus said he was a liar from the beginning, 
and the father of it. He can even make 
parents think that children and young people 
cannot be very happy in the service of the 
Lord, They allow them to do plenty of 
things which they themselves know are not 
right. " Oh, well," they say, " I suppose it 
isn't just the thing ; but then, they must en- 
joy themselves, you know." Not much of a 
compliment to our Lord to talk as if He could 
not make young people happy, but they 
must go into the world to enjoy themselves. 

Is there nothing for us to do but sit still 
and let Him make us happy? Why, of 
course we must do our part, just as we do in 
everything else. God gives us the flowers 
for our gardens, but He doesn't plant the 
seeds nor pull up the weeds. That is our 
part of the work. 

We need not think He is going to make 
us happy if we try to get everything we can 
think of that we like to have. No ; for the 
more we have the more we want, and we can 



130 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

always think of plent)' more things that it 
would be nice to have. Ahab had all things 
that a king could get, and yet he cried like a 
spoiled child, and went to bed quite ill, be- 
cause he could not get Naboth's vineyard. 
And finally he committed a dreadful crime 
to get it for his own. 

It is very apt to make people selfish to have 
more nice things than other folks have. They 
get a fancy that they must be indulged and 
humored whether anybody else has anything 
or not ; and that very selfishness is at the 
bottom of the most of their unhappiness. 

We don't get happy by trying to make 
ourselves so. Did you ever chase a butterfly 
while it kept flitting along just ahead of you, 
lighting every little while almost within reach, 
then spreading its pretty, old gold, velvet 
wings, with their beautiful shadings of color, 
and slipping off just as you had your hand 
over it? It seemed as though you must 
have that butterfly. You could not be happy 
at all unless you got it. So you kept on un- 



BE HAPPY. 131 

til you had tired the poor thing out, and 
then you brought your hat down on it, and 
thrust your hand up under the hat and 
caught tight hold of it ; but when you pulled 
it out its wings were crushed and broken, 
and so spoiled that all its beauty was gone. 
Now that is just the way that people seek 
happiness for its own sake. It always keeps 
a little ahead of them, and if they do get 
hold of it, it doesn't make them happy after 
all. 

The less we think of our own happiness, 
the better. A great king was trying his 
best to make his son happy. The poor lit- 
tle prince was discontented in spite of him. 
One day a wise man came to the palace, and 
the king laid the case before him. He 
wrote on a piece of paper something that 
would be sure to make the boy contented. 
It was this : " Remember every day to do 
something to make some one else happy." 

Hawthorne tells the story of a man who 
had swallowed a little reptile when he was 



132 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

drinking from a stream, and it had grown to 
be an ugly snake, and every time he opened 
his mouth to speak, it would hiss through his 
lips. He went everywhere, all over the 
world, and sought in every way to get rid of 
it. At last some wise person told him that 
if he would forget himself for one minute, 
the snake would have to leave him . By-and- 
bye he saw somebody who was in a great 
deal of trouble, and while he was trying to 
help that one he became so interested that 
he forgot about himself, and the snake, and 
the next moment when he opened his mouth 
to speak, the hateful thing slipped over his 
lips and crawled off into the grass. It is our 
thinking about ourselves, and trying to make 
ourselves happy, that makes us miserable. 
If we would forget ourselves in trying to 
make others glad, we would be happy before 
we knew it. 

The Bible says that we are to "rejoice 
with them that do rejoice." Then we are 
quite safe from envy, which is one of the 
deadliest enemies of happiness. 



BE HAPPY, 133 

When you are unhappy, you may be pretty 
sure that sin is at the bottom of the trouble. 
You are proud, or envious, or selfish ; or you 
are tempted to be so, and you had better go 
straight to the Lord, and ask Him to save you 
from the sin. If you have sinned, it will be 
like sand in your eyes, or gravel in your 
shoes. If you have a temptation to sin, it 
disturbs your peace. You must resist the 
devil and he will flee from you. Trust 
Jesus to deliver you from that sin. He was 
in all points tempted like as you are, yet 
without sin. 

Perhaps you have a real trouble. You 
may be friendless and homeless. Then you 
have the more need to trust in the Lord. 
He can make you happy when everything 
seems to go against you. " When thy father 
and thy mother forsake thee, then the Lord 
will take thee up." 

You may be weak and timid. Satan says, 
" I will yet make you as bad a boy as any 
that runs in the streets. You have no 



134 A DOZEN BITS FOR BOYS. 

strength to get away from me." The Bible 
says Jesus will gather the lambs in His arms 
and carry them in His bosom. So yon can 
trust Him and not be afraid. 

A little boy whose father was dead saw 
his mother crying bitterly. She told him 
they were going to lose their home,. She 
knew that his father had paid the debt, but 
the paper that showed it had been lost, and 
a wicked man had told her that she must pay 
the debt again or he would take the place. 
" Mamma, let us ask Jesus," said the child, 
"He knows. He won't let them drive us 
away from home." They prayed, and the 
widow felt comforted, though she could not 
see where help was to come from* When 
they got up from their knees, a butterfly 
flew into the room and tried to get out at 
the window. Then it fell down behind a 
large chest. The child wanted to set it free, 
so his mother pulled out the heavy box, and 
right behind it was the bit of paper that she 
had tried so hard to find. That was the way 



BE HAPPY. 135 

the Lord answered this prayer, and saved 
their home. 

A little boy was taken by his parents to a 
town where a great many people were dying 
with a dreadful disease. The baby died first, 
and then the father, and afterward the 
mother became very ill. When she found 
she must die, she called her little boy to her 
and said, ** Jamie, mamma is going to leave 
you among strangers, no one here to care 
for you* But remember, you belong to 
Jesus; mamma gave you to Him when 
you were a tiny baby, and He will send 
somebody to take care of you. Don't be 
afraid; Jesus never forgets." After she 
was dead they put her in a coffin, and the 
one little mourner trudged along after the 
hearse when they took her to the graveyard 
for burial. Then he went back to the room 
to stay until somebody should come whom 
Jesus would send. He waited till it began 
to grow dark. Then he was afraid, and 
thought, " Perhaps, after all, they will find 



136 A DOZEN BZ'S FOR BOYS. 

me quicker if I go out where they put 
mamma." So he went out to the graveyard 
and laid down on the newly-made grave, and 
said, " Now I lay me " and " Our Father 
which art in Heaven," and sobbed himself 
off to sleep. Early in the morning he was 
awakened by a gentleman who had lost his 
own little boy in the night, and had come to 
find a place to bury him. He shook the 
child's shoulder and said, " My little fellow, 
what are you doing here ? " Jamie looked up 
and said, " Baby died, and papa died, and 
mamma died ; but she said I belong to 
Jesus, and He would surely send somebody 
to take care of me, and I thought they would 
find me quicker if I were out here where they 
put her." The gentleman brushed the tears 
from his face and said, " I think Jesus has 
sent me to take care of you, and I will take 
you in place of my own little bojr." The 
child looked up at him with a keen^ sharp 
glance that satisfied him that the maw had a 
large, true, loving heart, and he said,„ 4 * Yes, 



BE HAPPY. 137 

I guess he has ; but it seems to me you have 
been a great while coming." It may seem to 
us sometimes in our trouble that the people 
whom Jesus sends to take care of us, are a 
great while coming ; but if we wait patiently 
we need not be afraid, for He will surely 
send them. 

The best way to be happy is to go straight 
to the Lord and tell Him that you want to 
be glad in Him, not in His works nor in His 
gifts, but in Himself ; you don't want to be 
happy so that you may enjoy yourself, but 
that you may let sorrowful people know how 
happy the Lord can make them. For His 
own glory, will He please make you happy 
and glad. David said, "Thou hast put 
gladness in my heart more than in the time 
when the corn and the wine increased." 
Paul prayed, " The God of peace fill you 
with all joy and peace in believing." Peter 
said of the dear Lord, " Whom having not 
seen ye love ; in whom, though now ye see 
Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy 



138 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

unspeakable and full of glory." God makes 
the little waves chase each other on the sand 
with the sunbeams braided all through them ; 
He makes the flowers open with their bright, 
sweet faces toward the sun ; He makes the 
lambs frisk and play, and the birds sing ; He 
makes colts prance and caper. He oertainly 
wants to give His children, whom He loves 
best of all, hearts full of happiness. If we 
turn to Him He will fill us with His own 
sweet joy, so that we may rejoice in the 
Lord always. 



CHAPTER XIL 

BE SOMEBODY. 

In the old days when a Saxon wished to 
bring contempt upon an enemy, he would 
write on the trees where the other could not 
fail to read it, his enemy's name with the 
word " Nithing " after it. 

You do not want to be a Nithing^ or a 
Nothing. You want to be the most of a 
Somebody that you can for the sake of Him 
Whose you are and Whom you serve. 

Some people find fault with the hymn 
commencing, " Oh, to be nothing, nothing," 
while others enjoy it greatly. That may 
seem strange, but it all depends upon how 
you look at it. I heard a minister say not 
long ago that he didn't like that hymn, but 
it was because it sounded as if you thought 
you were something, when, in reality, you 
139 



140 A DOZEN BE>S FOR BOYS. 

are nothing. Now all these people are 
right. The last named gentleman might 
have added to what he said, " The surer one 
is that he is nothing in himself, the more 
certain he is to be somebody in the Lord." 
Jesus said, If a man will lose his life for My 
sake he shall save it. He meant that if we 
are willing to give up our own selfish am- 
bitions, and have people call us " nithings " 
because we do His will, we are then just 
ready to take the best care of ourselves and 
amount to the most that God can make 
of us. 

You must make your body strong by tak- 
ing good care of it, because you need 
strength to do the Lord's work. If a man 
wants a horse to work well for him, he must 
feed, and groom, and care for him, or he may 
break down in the middle of the journey, 
or when the field is half plowed. Many a 
good man has failed in the midst of work for 
God, because he has not taken proper care of 
his body. 



BE SOMEBODY. 141 

You must make your mind strong by ex- 
ercise in mastering hard lessons. You must 
give it the food that is in good, solid books, 
and not too much of the sweetmeats that 
are in stories. 

You must let the Lord make your soul 
strong, as He certainly will, if you do your 
part in Bible study and prayer. He will 
give you plenty of good chances to know 
about Him, and you ought to use them in 
getting ready to render Him good service 
when you grow up. 

Did you ever hear of the gypsy boy dy- 
ing in a tent on an English moor ? A gen- 
tleman heard that in the gypsies' camp there 
was a boy lying very ill, and he went to see 
him. He bought some little things of the 
old gypsy, and then spoke about the 
boy being ill, and asked to see him. 
The father said, u Do you want to talk 
about religion to him?" "No." "What 
then?" "About Christ." "Oh, then you 
may go, but if you talk about religion I will 



142 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

set the dogs on you." The gentleman found 
the lad lying with his eyes closed, and look- 
ing as if he were already dead. He saw 
that what he said to help him, must be said 
at once and very distinctly. So he bent 
over him and repeated the words, " God so 
loved the world that He gave His only be- 
gotten Son, that whosoever beiieveth in Him 
might not perish but have everlasting life." 
He repeated this verse five times, and the 
boy did not seem to hear him. The sixth 
time, however, his sunken eyes came slowly 
open and he smiled and whispered, "And I 
never thanked Him. But nobody ever told 
me. I 'turn Him many thanks. Only a 
poor gypsy boy, I see ! I see ! I thank Him 
kindly." He closed his eyes with a very 
happy look on his face, and the gentleman 
knelt beside him and thanked God. The 
boy's lips moved again : " That's it." There 
were more words, but the visitor could not 
hear them. The next day the gentleman 
found that the boy had died during the 



BE SOMEBODY. 143 

night. His father said he had been very 
"peaceable" and had died a "tidy death." 
He wished him " good luck " and gave him 
some little things that the " boy Jitnmie " 
had made. 

Yon were "told" about Jesus and His 
love as soon as you were old enough to know 
anything You have been to church hun- 
dreds of times, and in Sabbath-school ever 
since you were large enough to go into the 
infant class. Some of the best people have 
been talking to you and praying for you; 
and, with many of you, it is the dearest wish 
of your father and mother that you may 
grow up to be earnest, active, Christian 
workers. All this ought to set you making 
the very most of yourself for Jesus' sake, so 
that you will not merely get into Heaven 
when you die, but you will get a good many 
people to go with you there. 

You need not put off your good work till 
you are grown up. You can have a part in 
helping on God's cause even while you are a 



144 A DOZEN BITS FOR BOYS. 

child. Good people are beginning to plan 
things for boys to do. 

You can help by being one of those on 
whom they rely — always in your place and 
ready to do what you can. 

You want to begin to do your little part 
in the missionary cause. Study about it, 
save your money for it, give always, not to 
have your class ahead of the rest in S unday- 
school, but because this money is going to 
help send Christ's light into the dark places, 
where people live very much as animals do, 
hardly knowing that they have souls, and 
that Jesus died for them. 

A little fellow was trotting down the 
street one day, and a gentleman asked him, 
" Where are you going so fast ? " " Oh, I'm 
running to the missionary meeting." " The 
missionary meeting ! And what have you to 
do with that ? " " Oh, I have a share in the 
concern," cried the boy. He had given his 
penny and his prayer, and that had made 
him eager to see what was to be done. You 



BE SOMEBODY. 145 

want a part in everything that is being done 
to help other people to be better, missionary 
work, temperance work, Sunday-school work, 
tract distributing, — there is a great deal 
that boys can do if only they have a heart 
in it. 

Our main hope in getting the world to the 
Lord, is that the children of to-day will learn 
to be brave and true, and ready to risk all, 
as they grow up, to rescue the perishing. 

What you do may seem little, but God 
can make a great deal of it. The best thing 
will be for you to grow up with a habit of 
doing good work so that it will come easy 
for you when you get strong. 

I was once in the Station of the Life Sav 
ing Service on Lake Michigan. A young man 
showed me how the crew has to go out in the 
life-boats, through the breakers, with the 
waves dashing over them, to bring drowning 
men from the wrecks. This was just north of 
Chicago. He said that when the people on a 
ship saw that thev could not get into port, 



146 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

they turned the ship's head toward the sand- 
bar and ran upon it ; then they threw up 
their rockets, and those in the Station would 
see them, and know that they were upon the 
bar, and that in a very short time the waves 
would beat the ship to pieces. Then from a 
small mortar, the life-saving men fired a bomb 
over the ship with a line attached to it. 
This caught on the wreck when the bomb 
fell into the water the other side of it. The 
shipwrecked sailors would get hold of it, 
and pull the rope out and attach it to the 
mast, and it was so arranged by pulleys that 
the men on shore would draw in the others 
in a sort of basket that they pulled over the 
rope. 

This young man showed me a suit of rub- 
ber clothing that was made double and filled 
with air between the outside and lining, so 
as to keep the waves from chilling the man 
who wore it in very cold water. He told me 
also, about one night when a ship was on the 
bar, and they had sent the ropes out with 



BE SOMEBODY. 147 

the bomb, but they could not draw the peo- 
ple to the shore. They had sent out on the 
rope a small piece of board with directions 
on one side in French, and on the other in 
English, telling the sailors not to tie the rope 
fast, but to leave it so that the pulleys could 
play around the mast. When they found 
they could not bring the sailors in, one 
young man said, " I will go out and see what 
the trouble is." So he put on those rubber 
clothes and went out, hand over hand, on 
the rope, with the waves tossing him this 
way and that, and the rope at the other end 
fastened only to the ship that might go 
to pieces any moment. When he reached 
the wreck he found that the sailors had 
looked only at the French side of the board, 
and being unable to understand it, had 
thrown it down angrily, and had taken the 
rope and tied it around the mast so that the 
pulleys could not play. He set that right, 
and they were all soon drawn ashore. 
Wasn't he brave to risk his own life and go 



148 A DOZEN BE'S FOR BOYS. 

out in the cold and darkness and storm, with 
the great waves beating and thrashing him 
about, to save the lives of the shipwrecked ? 
The Lord Jesus came from heaven to save 
us, and gave His life that we might live with 
Him in heaven. He cares infinitely for the 
poorest and meanest souls that He has made. 
The Bible says, " As He was, so are we in 
the world." 

If we would be somebody in heaven for- 
ever, we must be like Christ here, giving all 
our life and doing our very utmost to get 
everybody, everywhere, to trust in Jesus and 
*%® saved forever. 



THE BATTLE OF LIFfi. 

Gto forth to the battle of life, my boy, 

Go while »t is called to-day ; 
For the years go out and the years come in, 
Regardless of those who may lose or win. 

Of those who may work or play. 

And the troops march steadily on, my boy, 

To the army gone before ; 
You may hear the sound of their falling feet 
Going down to the river where two worlds meefe 

They go, to return no more. 

rhere's a place for you in the ranks, my boy 

And duty too, assigned. 
Step into the front with a cheerful face ; 
Be quick, or another may take your place, 

And you may be left behind. 

' There is work to be done by the way, my boy. 

That you never can tread again, — 
Work for the loftiest, lowliest men, — 
Work for the plow, plane, spindle and pen,— 
Work for the hands and the brain. 
149 



150 A DOZEN BE'S FOE BOYS. 

" The serpent will follow your steps, my boy 5 

To lay for your feet a snare ; 
And pleasure sits in her fairy bowers, 
With garlands of poppies and lotus flowers 

Inwreathing her golden hair. 

" Temptations will wait by the way, my boy, 
Temptations without and within; 
And spirits of evil, wUh robes as fair 
As those which the angels in heaven might 
Will lure you to deadly sin. 



46 Then put on the armor of God, my boy, 

In the beautiful days of youth; 
Put on the helmet and breastplate and shield,, 
And the sword the feeblest arm may wield 

In the cause of right and truth. 

'* And go to the battle of life, my boy, 
With the peace of the gospel shod, 
And before high neaven do the best you caa 
For the great reward and the good of man,, 
For the kingdom and orown of God." 



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